Manti, Utah
In the parking lot of the tiny post office in this town tucked along the edge of the Fish lake National Forest, a woman walked slowly toward the door.
A moment later she opened her mailbox, glanced inside and paused to take a deep breath. The envelope, she knew, would hold a photograph of an American soldier killed in Iraq. She knew it would bring a heavy rush of sadness. She knew that once again she would cry.
It’s been this way for Kaziah Hancock for 2 1/2 years now. Ever since the war began and American soldiers began to die and the loss made her heart ache. Ever since that day in 2002 when Hancock, a portrait artist who lives alone in a small cabin, tends to a herd of 50 goats and regularly drops a grain-thieving raccoon or skunk with a well-placed bullet from her .22-caliber rifle, made a vow.
She would stand at her heavily worn easel and create an oil painting of every single American soldier killed in Iraq.
Last week, the day the 2,025th soldier died, Hancock finished her 72nd portrait.
“When I made this commitment, the death toll was about 30 soldiers,” she said. “I had no idea.”
On Monday, six more American soldiers were killed, bringing the October toll to 92.
A soldier’s portrait takes about a week. “I want to paint as many as I can,” said Hancock, who is in her 50s. “There is no limit. The way I figure it, I can paint until the day I die.”
Now reinforcements are arriving. A half-dozen or more artists have offered to help Hancock. Some have already done a portrait or two.
Today the movement has a name (Project Compassion) and a website (heropaintings.com) under the guidance of Marie Woolf of Catheys Valley, Calif.
Woolf persuaded the Department of Defense to include Hancock’s portrait offer in each death-benefits packet sent to the family of a fallen soldier.
Woolf takes the phone calls from the grieving families.
“These days I get up to 12 a day,” she said. “It is excruciating and very, very personal.”
She has them send a photo of the soldier and a back ground letter to Hancock in Manti, some 120 miles south of Salt Lake City.
“I bring the envelopes home and open them,” the artist said. “And no matter how hard I try to be strong, it just hits me so hard. It’s the sparkle in their eyes. Most of them were just kids.”
Emma Johnson has one of Hancock’s portraits in her home in Charleston, W.Va. It shows the smiling face of Marine Lance Cpl. Adam Crumpler, who was killed June 18 by small-arms fire. He was 19.
“Adam was my grandson, but I raised him after his mother died in 1998,” Johnson said. “He was more of a son to me than a grandson. Now I look up at his painting all the time. She did such a great job. It’s the look in his eyes, mostly. She got it just right. It’s like he wants to speak to me.”
Hancock was trained by an artist who studied at the hand of Norman Rockwell. Her portraits, many of folk around Manti, have sold for upward of $2,000. Her portraits of the soldiers, though, go even deeper.
“I think about the people I love, my dearest friends, and I think about them dying, and then I can begin to get a sense of the loss felt by all of these families of all of these soldiers,” she said. “It gets into my heart.”
What the project hasn’t gotten into, she said, is her bank account. Hancock earns about $300 for each painting of a soldier, a fee paid from donations to a nonprofit foundation set up by a friend. From that $300, she spends $65 for a frame and about $115 for materials and shipping. That leaves her with about $120 a week.
“I was about $4,000 in debt when all this nonprofit started, and I think I’m still right about there,” she said, laughing.
“Hell, my whole life has been nonprofit. The thing is, I don’t need anything. The cabin is paid for and I’m frugal. I’ve always survived on nothing.”
And so she keeps painting. And once in a while, she gets a knock at her door in the shadow of the mountains from someone like Daniel Sekula. His son, Marine Pfc. Dustin M. Sekula, 18, was killed by enemy fire in Anbar province on April 1. When Dustin’s portrait was finished, his father told Hancock he’d come pick it up.
“One day he just shows up,” Hancock said. “Drove about 1,500 miles from Edinburg, Texas. I had the portrait on the easel and he took one look at it and he cried for five minutes.
“Then he thanked me, put it under his arm and got back into his car. Said he had to take his son home.”
Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
