As a painter, I have undertaken a few portrait commissions. The following describes one of the more hilarious of what I call "portrait commission moments." A moment that I shared with Eunice.
In 1995 I was asked to create a likeness of Eunice Shriver to be used as "the face" of a U.S. silver dollar commemorating the Special Olympics World Games. After several posing sessions in the Washington DC Special Olympic offices, I completed what we thought was a reasonable likeness. I delivered the drawing to the U.S. mint for their sculptors to render it onto the coin. A week later, I was summoned to the mint to approve the "sculpt." To my horror, they had turned my rendering of Eunice into a pre-pubescent Shirley Temple. Gone was Eunice's age acquired character; lines and wrinkles were miraculously erased. Distressed, I called Eunice. Her response, after gales of laughter, "put those lines and wrinkles back in - they were hard won!" Although the image on the coin still looks a bit like Betty Crocker, I will forever be indebted to Eunice and her reality check.