Seattle artist explains mental toll of working on Fallen Heroes Project

Every day after he brings the dead back to life, Seattle artist Michael Reagan goes for a 5.5-mile walk.

It’s a re-centering process Reagan has learned after decades of painting the portraits of America’s heroes who he knows just want to go home to their families and be whole again. And he told “KIRO Radio’s Ron and Don” that is what keeps him from breaking down.

“What I try and do is try and walk myself out of having a broken heart so that I can be prepared the next day to have another one,” he said. “It was really difficult to get over the emotional component of this at the beginning of the project. And it’s not any easier now. It’s just now I have a method.”

Reagan has drawn portraits around the world for the past 40 years, working as an artist for the Huskies and Seahawks for decades. But his most important work comes as the hand behind the Fallen Heroes Project, a nonprofit that provides free custom portraits to families of servicemen and women killed in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere involving the war against terrorism. That includes being charged with drawing the officers who were murdered in New York, Orlando, Baton Rouge and Kansas City.

Reagan said he can’t fully explain why these drawings mean so much to the families, but he knows they do. That’s why, most of the time, he wakes up at around 3 a.m. to start drawing.

“What happens to me, and I know how this is going to sound a little bit, but the people that I have downstairs in my house are waiting to go home – those are the fallen heroes,” he said. “And so what I do is just sit down and start drawing when they tell me it’s time. I just feel like there’s something going on that I have to pay attention to and it doesn’t really matter what time of the day it is.”

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The stories behind the art are both emotional and complex. Reagan told about finishing a portrait last week of a North Carolina man who had served five tours and received four purple hearts. The man returned home to his wife and two little girls. But when a fire started at the home, the mother ran to the neighbors for help, dad went back in to save the children.

“And when the mom got back everybody was dead,” Reagan said. “I did a portrait of the dad and the two little girls along with the bear that the mom said the little girls loved, and a lady bug. And when (the mother) received the portrait, she called me and said, ‘I opened the package with great anticipation not knowing what I was going to feel and the minute I saw the picture, I felt peace.’”

Reagan also creates portraits of military personnel who find out while deployed that they have a child but never make it home. In that way, he creates legacies that never had a chance to form.

“I’ve drawn babies who have sadly died at two hours old for mothers so I’m kind of used to doing this kind of thing but I think it’s important for a father, even if he doesn’t get to see his children, to be with his children, and I can do that with the work I do,” he said.

Reagan said portraits normally cost $750 and that the project is funded entirely through donations. Sometimes portraits show up on people’s doorsteps – and that includes Don O’Neill. After Don’s 94-year-old grandmother passed away, Reagan drew her portrait thanks to an anonymous donation.

“This portrait showed up and it’s hanging in my mother’s house. And every time I go back there we sit there, we look at this portrait, we reminisce,” Don said. “It looks exactly like her. And the thing is, wherever you move in the room, it feels like her eyes are following you.”

Part of Reagan’s gift comes from his own traumatic experience as a service member during the Vietnam War.

“I was a marine in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968 at the (Demilitarized Zone) and held one of my dearest friends as he died,” Reagan said. “And when he looked into my eyes and said he just wanted to go home and died, I know he went home. But he was also telling me what I needed to be able to do to do this work 40 years later.

“I think it’s a different perspective on life and death then I think a lot of people have,” he added.

Despite the unique perspective, Reagan admits it’s an emotionally draining subject matter that takes its toll. Don asked how he manages to function.

“It’s funny, when you know something is so important that it has to be done, you figure out a way to get it done,” he responded. “My feelings are real and it’s real hard some days – it was real hard this weekend in my studio, it was real hard when I was drawing that man and his two little girls – but what I was knowledgeable of is that I was about to walk out the door and go for a walk and see my neighborhood dogs, smell the air and listen to the birds and talk to the crows. All of those things help me heal every day.”

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