As a boy growing up in eastern Oklahoma, Willard Stone spent much of his free time drawing. Admiring the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, he dreamed of becoming a painter. When he was thirteen, a dynamite cap he was holding exploded and he lost segments of two fingers and the thumb of his right hand. Deeply affected, he withdrew, thinking he would never become the artist he hoped to be. But Stone's deep desire to create motivated...