(Note: For the past five years, World War II veterans have been dying at an average of more than 1,000 a day. With Memorial Day approaching, I will be focusing my next two Reflection columns on a pair of local WWII veterans and their stories of life and war.)

Bill Lewis still remembers one of his earliest drawings. The 92-year-old from Ann Arbor was real young at the time - maybe kindergarten or first grade - and he’d just received an easel, a slate and some chalk from his parents at his childhood home in Grand Rapids. With his new drawing set in tow, Lewis wandered out and sketched a boxcar. Now the only thing left to do was seek out his father’s approval. Lewis regarded his father, an electrical engineer who worked for the phone company his entire life, an expert on everything. His father liked the drawing.

“I’ve been sketching trains ever since.” Lewis said smiling.

Although Lewis never formally studied art, he knew from that moment on, his calling in life was to be an artist.

Of course it wasn’t always easy. Even though his parents had bought Lewis his first art set, they weren’t exactly keen on the idea of having their only child end up an artist, especially while growing up during the Great Depression. “You have to remember,” Lewis said, “during the Great Depression, nobody would be going into something as ridiculous as being an artist.”

But despite the times and lack of parental approval, Lewis’ love of drawing never waned. It wasn’t until he graduated from high school and began junior college in Grand Rapids in 1938, that he feared his art might take a back seat to world affairs when Nazi Germany marched into Austria.

With the prospect of war at America’s doorstep, Lewis figured it was better to enlist than be drafted, so he joined the Naval Reserves in June of 1938. In 1939, Lewis transferred to the University of Michigan, but in July of 1941, after an initial deferment, he was called to active duty.

Assigned to the gunship Marcasite, which was used mainly as a spotter for other boats in the naval fleet, Lewis found the war was always “just out of reach.” So he made use of his time by sketching boats, and planes, and urban landscapes - loading up on art supplies in San Diego, Pearl Harbor, and later in Seattle where the Marcasite was sent in the summer of 1944 to be a weather boat in the Gulf of Alaska. When the gulf’s rough seas tore apart the Marcasite, Lewis was reassigned to another boat - a carrier called Shangri-La.

It was on board the Shangri-La where Lewis’ sketches and paintings not only got better, but also took on historical importance. When the Shangri-La docked in the Leyte Gulf in July of 1945 with the rest of “MacArthur’s Navy” (every boat in the U.S. Naval fleet that wasn’t still in Europe) to prepare for the final invasion on Japan, Lewis would sit and paint a section of the enormous fleet every day until he painted the “whole thing.”

“Battleships, carriers, torpedo bombers, corsairs - everything!” Lewis said. “I had a buddy who was a signal man, and he pointed out and identified every ship I painted.”

Cameras were forbidden, but no one paid any attention to his drawings, until one day an officer walked past, stopped, looked over Lewis’ shoulder as he painted, and then told him, “You’ll never go crazy!”

After the atomic bombs were dropped, the fleet sailed into Tokyo Bay and Lewis eventually went ashore where he saw the incredible destruction the war had caused on the Japanese homeland.

“Seeing those cities (Tokyo and Yokohama) turned me into a peacenik right on the spot.” Lewis said. “It was the total cleaning out of a culture. This (Tokyo) was a modern place that had just been wiped out.”

When Lewis was in Japan, he ran out of drawing paper, so he started sketching in a small notebook, or on paper lent to him by his fellow sailors.

“They had to end the war,” Lewis joked, “because I was running out of paper!”

By war’s end, Lewis had amassed more than 200 drawings, sketches and paintings. After returning home, Lewis did make his living in the art world, eventually becoming an art professor at the University of Michigan.

In 1995, Lewis’ work from his time at war was put on display at the Clement’s Library at U-M. It wasn’t the first time Lewis had his artwork from war on display. In 1964, his show “The Last Year of the Civil War” went on a national tour.

Now, even at the age of 92, Lewis plans on having yet another show that deals with war. This one he plans to launch in four years to commemorate the centennial of World War I - a war in which four of his uncles fought. “I’ve had that war with me my whole life.” Lewis said, “It’s on my mind - always.”

Lewis has always wanted to do a show on World War I, a war he feels never really ended, picking up where it left off 20 years later as WWII. And now, after years of putting it on the back burner, he’s doing just that.

“This is strictly for me.” He said. “I don’t know where they’re going to go and I really don’t give a damn - I just figure I have to run for another four years to get it done.”

Despite his advanced age, Lewis thinks the odds of being around another four years are in his favor.

“My dad lived to be 96 - my mom was 104,” Lewis said, “and the guy who checks my prostate said he wants to be invited to my 100th birthday, so I guess he thinks I’ll be around.”

In the meantime, Bill Lewis will do what he does best - he’ll take out a piece of paper and he’ll draw.

Lon Horwedel is a photojournalist for AnnArbor.com. He may be reached at lonhorwedel@annarbor.com.