West Point man honors fallen soldiers

With some charcoal and paper, Mike Mack helps preserve memories.

Mack is an auto body mechanic who lives in West Point, but he’s also an artist who creates charcoal portraits of servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He makes the portraits for free and often personally delivers them with his brother-in-law, Terry Gillispie, a Lincoln man and military veteran who lost a leg when he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam.

Currently, Mack is displaying some of his artwork at the Nebraska Loess Hills Resource Conservation & Development Council office in downtown Oakland. The works include portraits of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and Hall of Fame baseball players, a couple of landscape oil paintings and pastel portraits.

It doesn’t include portraits of those lost in war, but those who visit the exhibit can see examples of work by an artist whose portraits have gone to many Midwest families. Mack estimates that he’s completed about 30 portraits of fallen soldiers since he began about five years ago.

A former Lincoln resident, Mack’s artistic endeavors began when he took a drawing class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1971. He and his wife, Mary Jo, moved to West Point in 1977 and he bought what became Mike’s Body Shop.

“I joined the West Point Art Club and we did a lot of oil painting and we did some pastels,” he said. “There were about three men and 10 women and the women liked doing landscapes and flowers. Time went by and I suggested we get someone who could teach us how to do portraits.”

An Omaha artist, who went by the name “Oz,” began teaching a charcoal portrait class that Mack said he really enjoyed. About five years ago, Mack became interested in airbrush artwork. He attended the weeklong “Airbrush Getaway” in North Carolina for three years in a row. While there, he learned a host of skills.

“I learned how to have everything in perspective … and how light affects a picture,” he said.

He got the idea to create portraits of fallen soldiers about five years ago. That’s when Gillispie showed him an article about an Idaho woman who made oil painting portraits of soldiers killed in Iraq.

Mack called the woman who said she could only make one oil painting a month and suggested that he try to do charcoal portraits of people from the Midwest. Mack’s mother-in-law, Peggy McFarland, who lives in Lincoln, sends newspaper articles about fallen soldiers to Mack.

“Without her help, I don’t think I’d be able to do it,” he said.

When he gets the parents’ names, he asks for a photograph of their son or daughter. He remembers one mother who simply couldn’t look at photographs of her son. She told Mack she’d call when she was ready to select a photo. She called him a year later.

After he gets the photo, Mack starts to work.

“I’m left-handed so I start from the ear and work my way left, because with charcoal you don’t want to get your hands in it,” he said. “I will sit for maybe three hours a night and usually I keep doing it every night. I usually can get one done in five days.”

Something happens while Mack is creating a portrait.

“I stare at that picture for close to 20 hours -- or 25 to 30 hours -- and I’m always looking at the face when I’m drawing. And by the time I’m done, I feel like I know them,” he said.

Mack then mats and frames the portrait under glass. Most of the time, he and his brother-in-law deliver them. Family members appreciate the portraits.

“They’re very touched and grateful,” he said. “There’s always tears shed, especially when I deliver them. That’s the part that’s hard for me. That’s the part that makes me feel like I’d rather send it to them, but my brother-in-law, he insists that if we can do it, that we do deliver it.”

Some family members will call a relative to come over and see the portrait while Mack is there. Many stay in touch. Some send Christmas cards.

“I always get a nice reply from them -- nice thank you cards and three or four page letters sometimes,” he said.

Mack has compassion for the families.

“I remember when my brother, Raymond, was in Vietnam,” Mack said. “I know what he went through and I feel bad for the families.”

Raymond came home from the war. Mack feels for families whose loved ones don’t return home alive.

“I can’t imagine a mother and father losing their son or daughter in a war,” he said.

Mack also has done other portraits -- one for a family whose young daughter died unexpectedly years ago and another for a little boy who has cancer. He drew a portrait of a man he’d bowled with for 20 years. The man had died of cancer. Mack left the portrait on the man’s porch; his wife came to Mack’s shop to thank him.

Many of Mack’s charcoal portraits, however, are of those who gave their lives for their country. It’s something he’s pleased to do.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s the best thing I think I could ever do in my life.”

Mack’s work is on display through the end of the month at Loess Hills.