 A young woman named Sharice Johnson, living in Boise, Idaho, called me on the telephone and she said she'd just seen me on NBC News. I didn't even know that they had done that and she said, how much would you charge me to draw a portrait of my husband, Michael? She said he was a corpsman and he died last year in Iraq. I paused for a minute and then I said, you know I'm a Marine Vietnam combat vet. I said corpsman are the bravest people I know and I've said that a thousand tons of I've said it once. She said just send me the photograph of your husband Michael and she did. I did his portrait right away. I sent the picture of Priority Mail back to her at Boise, Idaho. She called me next day after she received the picture. She said, I received your picture yesterday from my husband. And she said, just as you know, in the year that my husband's been gone people have taken care of me, walked with me, taken me to the doctor, fed me, cried with me, everything. She said, but I haven't slept one full night through in a year. And she said, after I saw the eyes of my husband's portrait she said I had about a two and a half hour conversation with him. She says, I'm only calling you to tell you that, thank you. She said last night's the first night in a year I've slept all night. I got off the phone and told my wife what happened. I said, now we need to do them all. She says, how are we going to do that? And I said, well, I'm capable of doing the art I've been doing portraits for, you know, 25, 30 years. That was 15 years ago, 5,700 plus portraits ago. I start with their eyes. Their eyes are finished just like this young man's. And the minute I finish his eyes, they're looking right at me and I'm looking right at him for the next seven hours. I draw his picture. I don't think about the next one. I haven't thought about the last one. When I'm done with this, it'll get a cover letter that I will write about this experience, this young man and I. And I'll send it home in the minute it's gone. I'm focusing on the next one.