Welcome to Kind World from W-B-U-R. I'm Erica Lance.

13 years ago, Michael Reagan got a phone call that would change everything for him.

Michael was an artist in Edmonds, Washington,

and the call was from a woman who wanted to

commission a portrait of her husband.

He was a corpsman in Iraq who had died the year before.

For Michael, the request was personal.

He'd been a marine in Vietnam and was still haunted.

In his most vivid memory, one of his fellow Marines bled to death in his arms.

They were both 19 years old. He just looked me in the face and

said Mike I just want to go home and he looked at me close his eyes and died.

Then we covered him with a tarp.

But I've seen that face for 48 years every day.

Michael says that when he returned to the US as a Vietnam veteran people spat at

him and no one seemed to understand what he'd been through. He felt as if he'd

left part of himself in Vietnam.

Like you dug a hole and buried that part that let you feel.

So in 2003, when Michael heard from this widow,

he decided without hesitation to draw her husband for free.

He mailed her the black and white pencil drawn portrait, and when she received it, she reached

out again.

She said, I'm calling you today because yesterday I want I open up the picture and looked into my husband's eyes.

...