A treasured photo or a stranger's story will often send a flood of tears rushing down his face.

"I cry," said Reagan. "I cry a lot down here."

These days, Reagan spends most of his waking hours at his drawing table in the basement studio of his Edmonds home. It is here he faces the heavy grief of thousands of families, and tries to ease their pain using what he knows best: drawing.

Such has been Reagan's life since he quit his job six years ago and began down a path that promised him nothing - not even pay - in return. That's when he began drawing the portraits of soldiers killed at war in hopes of helping their families heal.

Reagan offers free portraits to families who've lost a loved one to war. Since he began six years ago, he has drawn more than 2,000 faces of fallen soldiers in what is now known as the Fallen Heroes Project. And there are more than a hundred requests, waiting their turn, even as the U.S. military prepares for a gear shift in Iraq with Operation New Dawn in September.

Among his current projects is a portrait of a man and his grandfather. Trevor Roberts, a 21-year-old Marine died on March 24, 2007 in Iraq. His grandfather, William J. Ferguson, died exactly two years later to the date.

"Middle of March is the first anniversary of his (Ferguson's) death," Reagan said. "So the mother, when she called me, she said, 'Can you do'em both and get'em back to me right away?

"I just received the photos in the last couple days, and I said, 'You bet."'

Using photos and anecdotes of the men provided by the family, Reagan is drawing their portraits, side by side, on one piece of paper.

But before he ever sits down to start drawing, he takes time to get to know each subject first.

"They (the families) share with me videos, music, letters, diaries - I have diaries people wrote in the war until the day they died. The families share stories," said Reagan, who has even seen videos of some of the fallen soldiers' last moments in combat -- an indescribably emotional task.

"I've done over 2,000 portraits. I could have your heart ripped right out," he said of the soldiers' stories he's learned over the years.

Sharing these memories binds Reagan to the soldiers' families, many of whom have kept in touch. A mother of a fallen Fort Lewis soldier flew out from Connecticut to meet Reagan after receiving her son's portrait.

"She said, 'I came out to give you a hug,"' Reagan said, "'because I believe you were the last person to see my son."'

Another fallen soldier's mother called from the East Coast to say thanks. She told Reagan her young daughter's nightmares about her father's death ceased the day the family received Reagan's portrait of the man.

"In fact, what's funny is that her mother keeps sending me pictures of her as she's getting older," said Reagan, pointing to the picture of Samantha hanging in his studio. "As she gets older, we've become real close."

In Reagan's studio is also a fallen soldier's green beret, a gift from the family.

"The (soldier's) father said, 'The whole family talked about it, and we decided you should have it,"' Reagan said.

Reagan's work for these families doesn't stop at the drawing table. He carries around a cell phone dedicated to the needs of veterans and fallen soldiers' families. Sometimes they call to request a portrait. Or they might call in their darkest hour, sometimes in the middle of the night.

"I have many, many conversations from veterans who, you know, just want to talk," said Reagan. "The families feel the same loss. It's like, 'God, does anybody care?'

"There are not a lot of people helping these people (the fallen soldiers' families). I've decided this is what I'm going to do.

"I care. A total stranger cares. And that means a lot to these people."

On March 5, Massachusetts' state Legislature is scheduled to pass a joint resolution thanking Reagan for his work.

'That's how it all started with that woman in Idaho'

"You know, I loved my job. I had no reason to leave," said Reagan, who worked as University of Washington's director of trademarks and licensing for decades. But he's done more than design the new UW logo. Oprah Winfrey commissioned him to draw a portrait of her father. Shania Twain gave him three of her own guitars after he drew the singer. He's also been commission to draw the portraits of six U.S. presidents and other heads of state.

But a call from a woman in Boise, Idaho convinced Reagan to leave all that behind.

Cherice Johnson asked Reagan to draw a portrait of her husband, Michael Johnson, who had been killed in Iraq.

After Johnson received the portrait, she called the artist.

"She said, 'The minute I saw my husband's eyes,' she said, 'I was able to communicate with him and do things and say things that I hadn't been able to say in a year.' And she said, 'That very night was the first night I was able to sleep in a year,'" said Reagan.

Johnson's words stirred something inside Reagan, who turned to his wife and said, '"Now we need to do them all,"' referring to portraits of fallen soldiers.

But neither knew how they could manage to take on such a huge task.

"I said, 'I'm just going to turn it over to God. I know we don't have money to do that,"' said Reagan. "And here we are, six years later."

'The reason that I can do this is because I've been there'

Reagan is no stranger to combat. He served two years - 1967 and 1968 - in Vietnam's DMZ as a Marine squad leader. He saw action in ConTien, which was nicknamed "the hell of angels," Reagan said, "for all the reasons you'd think."

"We see things people should never see. We experience things people should never experience. But you live through it. And you come home if you're lucky. And I was lucky," he said.

Reagan believes every combat soldier should be awarded the Purple Heart, "Because we all have scars. We just can't show'em," he said. "The trauma of combat experience isn't anything anybody who hasn't been there will ever understand."

And the haunting pain of losing a loved one to war is something Reagan knows too well. In Vietnam, bullets whizzed by his head, only to strike fellow soldiers. He still vividly remembers holding a dying soldier in his arm. Reagan has not forgotten that soldier's face.

"There's an unspoken thing," he said. "I think just the act of surviving gives you something that makes a project like this possible."

'These people are bringing me home'

In the first year of the project, Reagan completed 32 soldier portraits. These days, he does about 600 each year.

"I spent all night drawing. Some times there are nights like that," he said. "I'm kind of used to the regime. But I've never done anything this important."

Thoughts of the soldiers' family members keep Reagan going, day and night. A mother once told him she couldn't start healing until she received his portrait.

'She said, 'I had nowhere to focus,"' said Reagan.

But this project has taken on a meaning of its own for the Vietnam vet and artist.

"When I came home (from Vietnam), I thought I was fine, even though I had about five years of craziness. I drank too much ... I mean, I did all kinds of stupid things," said Reagan.

But he wasn't too worried. After all, he was just 20 then.

"Except I wasn't able to settle down. Couldn't breathe," he said. "It was like I was missing something, but I didn't know I was ... something was gone, and I didn't know what it was."'

After decades, the answer finally came to him while working on these soldiers' portraits.

"What happened was I hid from me ... I wasn't feeling love. I was afraid to. People who I loved and cared for blew up, or I couldn't trust'em," he said. "You know, we were treated pretty badly when we came home."

But then he heard Cherice Johnson talking about her husband's eyes.

"I felt something inside me open," Reagan said. "I started to realize the piece of me that I'd left in Vietnam. These portraits all started to happen. What you're seeing in these portraits is that awakening in me.

"It's changed me. It's changed who I am ... one of the things I'm also able to do now is...feel."

And in this way, the project has turned into something that feeds both the artist and the soldiers' families.

"I love the idea that I get to do this. I hate the idea that I have to do this. There is no way to explain this. Do I wish all these people were alive and I hadn't done this project? You bet. You bet. But they're not.

''I'm really happy to come home. But sometimes, I feel really guilty that these people had to die to bring me home ... these people are bringing me home."

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Donations to the Fallen Heroes Project can be made on the donation page on FallenHeroesProject.org.