Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
award winning actor and director Gary Sinisee. In addition to his outstanding work in
film, television, and on stage, mister Cinese is widely known and highly
respected for his tireless work in support of veterans, active duty military, and
their families. For many years now, he's been the co host of the
PBS National Memorial Day Concert and he's also the founder of the Gary Sinies Foundation,
which does tireless work on behalf of our nation's veterans and their families.
And Gary, it's an honor to have you with us. Thank you,
Thank you so much. Where were you born and raised? Sir? I
was born in Chicago, on the south side of Chicago, little town called
Blue Island, Illinois, and grew up there. Started a theater company there
when I graduated from high school called Steppenwolf. Spent many, many years they're
doing theater, and then moved to California and have been living there for about
thirty five years. And there was some military service previously in your family,
correct, So my grandfather, let's go back to World War One. My
grandfather served in World War One in the US Army. He was an ambulance
driver during the Battle of the muse Argon, which you know, that's the
most devastating battle I think that the United States has ever faced. Twenty six
thousand were killed and many more wounded, and my grandfather was driving in an
ambulance back and forth, you know, carrying the wounded from the front lines,
and he didn't talk about it much when he was young. I didn't,
unfortunately, get to ask him. I wasn't paying attention when I was
when he was still alive. But thankfully my uncle, who was also in
the US Navy during World War Two, he became a writer after World War
Two, and he picked my grandfather's brain a little bit and got him to
tell some stories. And there was one story about him driving an ambulance with
a line of ambulances and at that time, for whatever reason, they had
a red cross painted on every single ambulance, and the Germans decided to target
all the ambulances, and the one in front of him was destroyed and the
one behind him was destroyed. For whatever reason, he escaped that, you
know, went right back at it after that. He was only seventeen eighteen
years old at that time, and then he had three sons. As I
said, my uncle Jerry was on a ship in the Pacific during World War
Two, my uncle Jack, the oldest of the three brothers, who was
a navigator on a B seventeen over Europe. And then my dad, Sir
in the Navy during the Korean War. Wow, that is an incredible legacy
of service. You know. I will say that by the time I was
old enough to kind of really understand, you know, that my family had
served in these devastating wars, all of them had put it behind them and
they never talked about it. It was only later that when I got very
involved with supporting veterans. My uncle Jerry had passed away he was on this
ship in the Pacific, but my uncle Jack was still alive. So I
started picking his brain and taking them around to all kinds of things, including
bringing them here to the National Memorial Day concert. Every year. I'd get
them together with Joe's uncle who served in World War Two as well, and
you know, every year it would be a great thing. And then,
you know, my dad served in the Navy during the Korean War, but
he wasn't deployed overseas, but it was really on my wife's side of the
family when I met her and she introduced me to her brothers, who all
served in the Army during Vietnam. That did more in some ways to affect
me and affect what I'm doing today than even the veterans on my own side
of the family, because Vietnam was so I mean, it was so close
to me. I was eighteen years old nineteen seventy three when combat operations ended.
Had I been just a little bit older, who knows, I could
have been drafted or whatever. And her brothers were just a little bit older
than I was, and they really gave me a strong education about what it
was like to serve in Vietnam and then come home to a nation that had
really turned its back on our veterans at that time, and that was a
motivator for me. It really motivated me back in the eighties to get involved.
It was supporting, especially at that time, our Vietnam veterans. But
all that has kind of snowballed into just a full time mission with the Gary
Soneeze Foundation, and I look forward to getting into that very much detail.
A little bit later, you were still a teenager when you founded your theater
company, correct, I mean that takes quite a bit of initiative. Eighteen
years old, graduated from high school. I graduated late, actually, because
I was a troubled teenager in some ways academically and just didn't go well for
me. But I did find something that I was good at, which was
getting on stage and clowning around and spinning out lines and acting in plays and
that kind of thing. And I was good at it. And when I
graduated from high school, I considered should I try to go to college?
But high school had been so difficult that I just didn't do that and just
got some kids together and we started doing plays. And that was in nineteen
seventy four, and we started finding spaces and we would do plays in these
spaces and it would just be for fun, you know. I love doing
it in high school and wanted to keep doing it, but I was now
out of school, so we found ways to do it. And that all
turned into the creation of a theater company that's been around now for fifty years
called Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. It's it started with nothing but little kids wanting
to do plays, and it has grown over the years into a giant theater
complex on North Halsted Street in Chicago, multimillion dollar theater complex. Lots of
great actors and writers and directors and people have come out of there. And
it all started fifty years ago with just some kids who wanted to do plays.
It really is a great kind of American theater story, the sort of
the American dream. You just think of something and you put your heart into
it and go for it and keep at it, and who knows, you
know, fantastic American story. You mentioned that you started to get involved in
veterans causes, specifically related to Vietnam. That's in the eighties. What kind
of activism were you doing then, Well, it was after getting to know
my wife's brother, her two brothers, and her sister's husband all served in
Vietnam, and getting to know them a bit in the seventies and early eighties
was an eye opener for me, and I felt a lot of compassion for
what happened to our Vietnam veterans when they came home, and I started to
think about it when I was in high school, they were off in the
jungle and they were fighting in Southeast Asia and I was, as I said,
doing my high school plays and playing in a rock band and just you
know, doing the high school thing. And then I really started to think
how how just oblivious I was to what was going on, even though it
was on television all the time. The casualty reports coming home from Vietnam were
devastating. And then when I met my wife and she introduced me to her
brothers, combat veterans, all of them, and they started to describe what
it was like to serve and and what it was like when they came home.
And I remember my brother in lawn Jack, he was a combat medic.
He was married to my wife's sister, who was also in the army.
That's how they met. He started to tell me about coming home from
Vietnam and he got out off the plane and in the airport, he's walking
through the airport in his uniform and people are screaming at him, and you
know, he's spitting on him, And I mean, can you imagine he
just two days ago, he's in the jungle fighting a war and finally he
gets to come home. And that's the reception he received. Well, that
was that was not an unusual reception for our Vietnam veterans at that time,
and so he went into the bathroom, took his uniform off and put his
clothes on, you know, civilian clothes, and he was in shock coming
home. He stayed in the army for quite a while after that, and
I think that was a good thing my other, you know, because he
was still around a lot of fellow veterans who had served in Vietnam, and
it was a community of people that had understood each other. Whereas my wife's
the younger of the two of my wife's brothers, who was a combat helicopter
pilot, he got out of the service after Vietnam and he struggled. He
struggled a lot. He didn't have that community. He went back to his
town. He was a Vietnam veteran. That was not a good thing to
be at the time, and it was a difficult time for him. So
I learned a lot, quite a bit from the Vietnam veteran side of my
family, and I felt a lot of passion for them. I felt terrible
for them, and so I wanted to try to do something to help support
our Vietnam veterans back in the early eighties. So that's when I started to
look for as a director in the theater, I started to look for material
that would speak to the Vietnam veteran experience, and I found a play that
was written by a group of Vietnam veterans. They were actually performing it on
stage. You know, all these veterans like doing a play about their lives,
and it was so powerful. I convinced them to let me do it
in Chicago. And that really was a galvanizing moment back in the early eighties,
with you my focus on Vietnam veterans and engaging with a community of veterans
in Chicago that I still with some of them. I still stay in touch
with them today because of that play and because what that play did for them
was it was helpful, it was healing. It was very positive for me.
And that's an early seed that was planted that grew into, you know,
a full on mission years later. That's a claimed actor and director Gary
Sineese explaining how he became involved in veterans causes decades ago. Another critical factor
in his devotion to active duty military veterans and their families was his life changing
role as Lieutenant Dan in the hit movie Forrest Gump, and we'll hear all
about that part of his story in just a moment. I'm Greg Corumbas,
and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas.
Our guest in this edition is actor and director Gary Sinze, who was also
extremely well known for his decades of tireless work on behalf of our military,
our veterans, and their families. In the previous seg Cinesse explained how the
Vietnam War service of his wife's brothers greatly motivated him to help our veterans.
The next big step in his advocacy work grew out of his role as Lieutenant
Dan in Forrest Gump, and we continued the conversation with Cinesse explaining how he
got that role and why it made such a profound impact on his life.
I remember right after I did the play, and the play was called Tracers.
It was very powerful, very moving. It was unlike anything I'd done
because it was speaking so specifically to real life people who had lived this thing
and wrote these experiences down and then they were performing them. That was impactful
for me at that time. And I remember just gosh, you know,
months later, I remember going to we took one of our plays, not
this one, but we took another one of our plays from Chicago to New
York. And I heard when I was in the play in New York performing,
I got an agent and you know that kind of thing, and they
told me about a Vietnam movie that was being made by Oliver Stone. They
got me an audition for it, and it was Platoon, and it was
back in nineteen eighty four. So I auditioned for Platoon, and I felt
like, I've got to do this. I've just spent all this time with
Vietnam veterans back in Chicago, engaging with that community. I'm trying to help
them. I'm trying to do what I can to support them. Along comes
this movie that's being made about Vietnam. I've got to do it. And
I remember I think I was pretty close to getting a part in it in
Platoon in nineteen eighty four, but then the money fell out, and I
remember Oliver Stone had a kind of a setback with the money, like his
main producer dropped out or something, and so it just kind of and flat
and nothing happened to it. But I felt like, you know, so
passionate about the Vietnam experience, and for the next you know, ten years,
I kept trying to do what I could to support them in various ways,
especially in the Chicago area because that's where I was from, and engaging
with them. Well ninety I move out to California later on, start doing
a little bit of movie work and that kind of thing, and along comes
another opportunity to audition for a Vietnam veteran and as Forrest Gump. I went
in in nineteen ninety three audition for it. I felt like, you know
this, I gotta get this. I just really wanted it. But then
I remember not hearing anything. You know, you go in an audition.
Then the first thing you do when you get out of the auditions you call
your agent and say, did you hear from them yet? Did they say
anything? You know what they say about me? And they said, well,
they said it did great, but they're still, you know, keeping
their options open. They're looking at this and looking at that. So I
didn't really hear anything for a while. So I went on audition for other
things, and but three weeks later I get a call that I got the
part. I mean, it was a career changing because the movie was so
good and so many people saw it, and it was you know, got
a lot of awards and all that, but it was also in as a
guy who was playing a double ampute Vietnam veteran, it introduced me to countless
organizations and people and individuals and the Disabled American Veteran Organization who represent at that
time, they represented one point five million wounded veterans going all the way back
to World War Two, and so I started supporting them, and Lieutenant Dan
continues to this day. It's almost thirty years since the movie is made to
play a part in this ongoing mission. As so many people have seen it,
so many wounded veterans have seen that movie. It's a positive ending to
that story when you look at it. Lieutenant Dan's okay in the end,
you know. And I tell this story because back in the late seventies early
eighties, there were a bunch of Vietnam movies that were made. If you
recall Coming Home and Casualties of War and Platoon as one of them, Apocalypse
Now, Deer Hunter, a lot of them, and it just always felt
I'm just not sure that that Vietnam veteran is going to be okay at the
end of the movie, you know, you weren't sure. In fact,
at the end of Coming Home, Bruce Dern takes off his clothes and swims
into the ocean and he's not coming back, you know. So it was
always a kind of telling and a truth telling, because there were a lot
of Vietnam veterans struggling and suffering at that time. But then there was also
the other side kind of the story, where where veterans could come home,
process their war experience and move on from it and be successful in life.
And we hadn't but we hadn't seen that story until fourst Come came along.
And what happens to Lieutenant Dan at the end of the movie. He's standing
up, he's moving on, he's married, he's making money, he's rich,
he's you know, he's successful in business, and he's doing okay.
And that's I tell this all the time because that is what we want for
every single veteran coming home from war. We want them to be standing up
again, moving on and to be okay. And that's why I guess Lieutenant
Dan has continued to play a role in my life. It's a very demanding
role, because, as you mentioned, there's really three different phases of Lieutenant
Dan. There's the one who's always on their case before he gets injured in
Vietnam, there's the guy who's spiraling downward after the injury, and then there's
the story of coming back. So how did that challenge you to really capture
those very different dimensions. It's a really nicely constructed, short little part of
the movie. When you look at it, you know, Lieutenant Dan's there
in the beginning, and he's you know, marching him around, and then
then they get blown up and he's in the hospital, and then he's gone
from the story for a while, and then he shows up again and he's
living on his own, isolated, abusing alcohol. You know, not an
untypical story for a veteran struggling from with post traumatic stress. He's got a
terrible guilt too. He's not only injured and feeling abandoned by the country,
but he's got a terrible guilt of that it was his fault that all those
people got shot, shot up and blown up because he walked him into an
ambush. And so he's dealing with a terrible guilt and having a hard time
processing that, but then things happen, find some shrimp, and all of
a sudden he's a rich guy and he's doing all right. All right,
So it's a beautiful it's a beautiful story, and it's a short little story,
but it's it's so well constructed that the moments that you have with that
character that it really resonated with a lot of veterans I know, and especially
Vietnam veterans who went through that time. Did they have military advisors on set
for you and Tom Hanks and Michael T. Williamson, did they guide you
through what it was like? Yeah, there's a Marine captain named Dale Due,
and Dale was actually the he started doing the military advising thing on platoon.
That was his thing with Oliver Stone. He knew Oliver Stone and he
did all the training of all the guys on that, and then he built
it into a business where he'd get hired by just about everybody who was doing
a military movie and they'd bring Dale in. And so Dale and I got
to be pretty good friends and have stayed in touch over the years. We're
still good, good pals, and I really give him a lot of credit
for helping to shape that first part of the story making Gary Sinise into a
military leader and somebody, you know. I kind of based the character a
little bit on my brother in law, who was a great west Point He
was Class of sixty six. It was a devastating year for west Point in
Vietnam. My brother in law, Mac, he went to Vietnam and had
had a couple of times. He went as a platoon leader, lieutenant and
then went back as a company commander, so he did two tours. And
I really sort of based even though Lieutenant Dan was we we figured he's from
the South, not the North. I kind of based a little bit of
the military leader on my brother in law a bit, and then Dale helped
me to shape sort of the you know, this is what you do in
the army kind of thing, you know. And by the time we started
shooting all the Vietnam stuff, I felt like Lieutenant Dan. I felt like
I was Lieutenant Dan wanted to be a great military leader. I have no
doubt that my brother in law, Mack, had he he lived, unfortunately
passed away of cancer in eighty three. If had he lived, I have
no doubt he would have been a four star general. I've met four star
generals who he taught at West Point who you know they and they went on
to have great military careers and you know, get their fourth star. And
there's no doubt in their mind that that Mac would have done the same had
he had he lived. He was, he was on his way in the
military. In fact, they give two great awards in his name. One
at Fort Leavenworth, an Excellence and Leadership Award at Fort Leavenworth in his name,
and same thing at West Point an Excellence and Leadership Award. You get
the mac Harris Award. And he was very significant to figure in the army.
He's part he's in the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame because of his contribution
to the army. So I have no doubt he would have been a fourth
star. And I sort of based Lieutenant Dan a little bit on him.
Lieutenant Dan just wanted to be a great military leader or or he was going
to die in battle, like the rest of his relatives. Remember we see
all his relatives, and never for one minute did he considered the other alternative,
which was that he would be wounded, you know, and taken off
the battlefield, you know, not being able to finish his career. From
an entertainment perspective, what's it like being on the set and being part of
a film you know is going to be a huge movie. Well, you
don't know if it's gonna be successful. But you've got Tom Hanks who had
just won an Oscar for Philadelphia, Bob Zamkas obviously a very accomplished director,
So I was going to get a lot of attention at least. Right,
Well, here's what we knew. We knew we had a great script by
Eric Roth. It was a wonderful story. We had Bob and we had
Tom, and you know, it was a great, great cast. So
and we were having a ball making it. You know, Bob was probably
a little pulling his hair out from time to time. In fact, I
know he was. You know, the studio was always bearing down on you
on the budget and everything like that. But the actors, all of us,
were really enjoying working together. But I'll say this, you know,
like Robin Wright, for example, there I had one little moment with Robin
in the entire movie, so I didn't have a clue what she was doing
when they were shooting all her scenes. So I didn't know what Robin had
done. Same thing with Sally Field, I didn't really know. One little
moment was Sally at the wedding. I had a few moments with Bubba and
the rest of all my moments or with Tom, so I knew what we
were doing, but I really didn't know what everybody else was doing in the
movie until I saw it for the first time. They brought us all together
in a small screening room and showed us a movie, and then we all
looked at each other at the end, and everybody who's a lot of smiles
because everybody knew it was good. And then just a week later it opened
in the theaters and it's still around. And then the very next year,
you're part of Apollo thirteen, playing Ken Mattingley, who did not get to
be on the mission, but ended up playing a critical role helping saving that
crew and bringing them home safely to the Earth. So a couple different questions
quickly about that. As opposed to Lieutenant Dan, who you based on several
real people, Ken Mattingley is a specific real person. I don't know how
directly and volt he was with coaching you. But what's it like knowing that
you are supposed to be this other person who's real and not some imagination of
a screenwriter somewhere. Right. That's a great I'm PAULA. Thirteen is a
great story. I mean when I read it, I thought, this is
just a great story for a Hollywood movie. I actually got the part in
it before Forrest Gump had come out. So Tom's going on from Forrest Gump.
He's going on next next thing. He's going into space. Right,
So he tells Ron Howard, Hey, you know you should you should meet
Gary, And so I I went in. Ron said, audition for any
of the astronauts except for Tom. Just pick one and come in an audition
for him. And I thought the story of t came Addingley was a really
good one, even though he doesn't go into space. I just thought,
you know, I'd like the story of the guy. He gets pulled,
he's out, you know, he's supportive and everything, but he wishes he
was up there with you know, he trained hard and he and all of
a sudden, because you know, he's been exposed to the measles, they
can't they can't put him on the ship. But then he gets called back
and he's needed again, and he plays a vital role in saving the day
bringing the guys home, and I thought that was a great story. So
I an auditioned for that one, and thankfully Ron Ron gave me the part.
And then I remember I remember seeing Ron at the at the premiere of
Forrest Gump, after he'd already cast me in Apollo thirteen. He goes,
I'm and he's just seen the movie and he said, I'm glad I cast
you. That that was really good. So he liked, he liked from
Forrest Gump and on to Apollo thirteen and we had just a wonderful time with
with Forrest Gump. We we did all that military training, going out with
Dale Dye and living in the woods and sleeping out there and everything, you
know, training and all that stuff. With Apollo thirteen, we did kind
of something similar where we would you know, we went to space camp in
Huntsville, Alabama. We went down to Houston to Johnson Space Center. I
went and saw one of the shuttles go up. We went on the Vomit
Comet, you know, the airplane that drops you into zero gravity and we're
all floating around up there. So we got to do a lot of really
cool things in preparation for that movie. And then once we started working on
it was just you know, again, it was just a great story,
great cast, cast is awesome. Yeah, I was really happy to be
in that one. Now you not only portrayed Lieutenant Dan, you created a
band with his name on at the Lieutenant Dan Band. How did that happen?
Well, it's funny. After so getting involved with all the veterans work
the eighties and nineties, and those years weren't full on like I'm doing now,
but they were steps, you know, they were laying the foundation for
something that would take take a big step forward into a full time mission.
After September eleventh, two thousand and one, and having been involved with veterans
and then seeing okay, now we're deploying to Afghanistan. People are getting hurt.
We're deploying to Iraq. People are getting hurt. Families are losing loved
ones. It's a painful time, especially for our military. I just wanted
to do something to support them. So I volunteered for the USO and started
going out and visiting the war zones and military bases and hospitals and just you
know, walking in and and shaking hands and and just visiting with people and
nine times out of ten they didn't know what my name was, but they
knew Lieutenant Dan walked in the room. So there would say, Lieutenant Dan,
what's your name, you know, and so I'd introduced myself and they
want to talk about the movie and it'd be Lieutenant Dan this and Lieutenant Dan
Dan. So when I after doing several of those tours, I finally,
you know, I had musicians I played with for fun, and I,
you know, I thought it'd be really cool that, you know, to
do what Bob Hope did, which was go out and entertain play music and
have a show. Because I'd been on several USO tours where there were performers
and I was Lieutenant Dan, you know, waving the crowd, but there
were performers, singers and you know, cheerleaders doing their thing, and it
was entertainment. You know, that's what the provides. And I thought,
well, I want to be a part of that. So I kept bugging
the USO and eventually they set up a tour where I could take my musician
palace with me, and I thought, okay, what am I going to
call this? Well, most people know who Lieutenant Dan is, but they
don't know Gary. So I'll just call the Lieutenant Dan Band and they'll go,
what's that and then they realize Lieutenant Dan is actually in the band,
So it was it was kind of cool. And you know now it's uh,
I you know, I've had a two television series since then. You
know that. You know, we've played hundreds of shows on military basis all
over the world. I think our team has been counting the military basis and
that I've been to us. It's something like one hundred and seventy military basis
over the last twenty years. That's a lot of military basis and some of
them multiple times. So I mean there's been you know, hundreds of tours
and trips and stuff. And now within the military they know who Gary Sneeze
is because I'm you know, I've been supporting them a long time. But
so it's Gary Sineese and the Lieutenant Dan Band. Now it's not just the
Lieutenant Dan Band. It's like, okay, we'll combine the two because they'll
know somebody will know one of them anyway. That's actor and director and tireless
veterans advocate Gary Sineese explaining his memorable roles in two classic films and how they
changed his life. Up next, his devotion to veterans and their families ramps
up after nine to eleven and eventually leads to the creation of the Gary Sinees
Foundation. That's straight ahead. I'm Greg Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles.
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
award winning actor and director Gary Sineze. For decades now, he's been equally
well known for his devotion to our veterans, their families and the families of
our fallen heroes. And we pick up the conversation as Sinese explains how the
Gary Sonese Foundation came to be. Well, the foundation grew out of all
that. The Gary Sonese Foundation came after, you know, several years of
working with the USO, with multiple other charities military nonprofits. One way that
I found that I could support more people was by supporting a lot of different
military and veteran and first responder nonprofits. So I would hear about something and
call him up and say, Hey, can I come and help raise money
for you or do some PSAs for you, or you know, bring my
band for an event or whatever, I want to help you so that you
can raise more money to keep doing your good work. And I ended up
doing that was many, many things, I think twenty five or thirty different
organizations over a long period of time, and you know, it just became
clear that this was this was a game I was in. I was going
to keep playing, and the next thing that I would do would be to
create my own nonprofit. So having done that for a long time, you
know, you think, well, what are you going to call it?
And by that point twenty ten, twenty eleven, I had been doing it
for so long and people were recognized that I was serious about it, and
I had a fairly strong reputation within the community and within the nonprofit military world
and all of that that the name of the foundation was clear. I'm just
going to put my name on it, and I'm going to make sure that
people know if I'm putting my name on this, it's serious and they can
trust it. And I have a tremendous team of people that's that's out there
every single day. Now. We're doing so much everywhere, I mean,
in so many spaces for veterans and older veterans, younger veterans, active duty
families wounded. We're entertaining. You know, my band goes out and my
band's a program of the Foundation. We you know, I just call up
people and say can I come and help you. I'll bring the band and
we'll do a show for you, and we do that every month. You've
listed so many different areas that the Foundation serves, and there's obviously countless ways
to help veterans and families. So how do you prioritize where your time and
your resources go, well, my personal time and reason or the foundation or
both. We have four programmatic pillars within the Foundation. We have our RISE
program, our relief and resilien see, we have first Responder outreach, we
have community and education, all these all these things and within within those pillars
you've got all these different initiatives and things, and it all comes from things
that I was doing before I created the Foundation. So when I created the
Foundation, uh, you know, we we sat down, We're drawn up
the papers and everything like that. We're like, like, what are you
going to do? And having been involved with so many military and first responder
nonprofits who are doing all kinds of things, that's what I wanted to do,
just all kinds of things. I want to be in as many spaces
as possible to help as many people as we can who need it, who
you know, we can deploy resources. And I want the American people who
donate to the Foundations and to know that they can rely on us, that
we will place their contributions, their donations in the proper place and make sure
that people get helped. So we're in so many different areas right now,
and it all comes from just all these different areas that I was in before
I started the foundation. So does it take a pretty big team of people
to operate. Yeah, yeah, we have to because I want to do
a lot of different things and I want to be us supportive and I want
to be flexible to change with the needs as time evolves. Maybe there's one
need that you know, we don't need to be in that space as much
now because there's not as much There is not as many problems in that area
as there used to be. We can then, you know, revert some
of that that generosity of from the American people and take it and put it
put it somewhere else. But we're always going to be evolving and changing,
and I hope that the Foundation, The Garrison East Foundation is here for a
long time. I have a very busy team. They're always busy. We're
doing something every single day somewhere, you know. And then we're you know,
we're giving you know, we're giving grants. We can't do at all.
I can't have a thousand people working at this nonprofit to do all these
different things. But in our mission statement it says that we create programs and
we support programs. And I made it that way so we'd be flexible enough
to say, hey, we're not doing this particular kind of thing right now,
but you are, and you're doing it well. And the American people
trust us that we're going to do good things with their funds, and so
we're going to support that work. You're working in mental health and you're trying
to help people to get over some of the things that they've been through in
military service. We're going to help deploy some of those funds so that so
that you can do that good work. And so we support unique programs as
well as create them at the Garysonees Foundations so that we can help a lot
of people. Perhaps the most well known project of yours, as the Snowball
Express. Tell us a little bit about that one. Well. Snowball Express
was started back in two thousand and six. Some folks on the West Coast
in California wanted to help some children who were going through a grieving process having
lost a parent in military service, and they wanted to help them at Christmas
time and a tough tough time for a child who's who's lost a parent.
So they pulled some money together and they got some airplane tickets and whatever,
and they brought a bunch of families to Anaheim, to Disneyland and they filmed
it, and you know, the kids were having fun and it was a
It was also a very healing thing for all those children to be around other
children that were going through the same thing, all military children who had lost
a mom or dad, and it was it was very positive, very healing.
They and they filmed, they made some video of it and then called
me about gosh, I don't know, three weeks after it and they approached
me. They knew I was doing a lot in the military support space and
they called me and told me about that event, and I said, well,
come come and see me to my office. So they came to my
office on the CBS lot I was shooting CSI New York. They showed me
the video. I was I was very touched, very moved by it.
I had actually been trying to just prior to that, not maybe maybe a
year or two prior, I was trying to work with some other organizations that
we were trying to focus on the children of their fallen UM did a little
bit, but it never took on a big It wasn't a big effort.
It was small. And then along comes this thing that where they took these
kids to Disneyland, and so I said, and they said, we want
to do it again next year, and I said, okay, I'm in
and I'll bring my band. I'll donate, I'll donate all the production and
fly my band in and you know, you won't have to worry about those
costs, and I'll come and we'll play for the kids. And so I
did that in two thousand and seven. It was documented in a documentary called
Lieutenant Dan Band for the Common Good. And that very first event is documented
on that documentary where you can see me there with the kids and talking to
the band about what we're doing here with these children. And after that first
event, I was. I was in so two years later, or Airlines
were very involved providing all the transportation for the kids. They provide charter airplanes
to bring the kids, and pilots would volunteer and flight attendants would volunteer to
do it, and you know, they'd provide all the transport to get the
kids there. Well, they got so involved that they decided to move the
event to Dallas because that's where American Airlines, that's their hub, right,
And so we were there for quite a while. I brought the band there
and just kept doing and doing it for a long time. And then after
nine years in Dallas, I had this great relationship with Disney and you know
from movies and narrating at Disney World and being a part of stuff there that
I said, you know, we get we should bring the kids to Disney
World. That's the next step. It was going to cost a lot more
to bring all those kids Disney World in the hotels and everything. So we
decided that we would fold Snowball Express. It was his own five O one
S three, we would fold it into the Garysoneese Foundation as U and one
of our initiatives under our relief and resiliency program. We were able to make
Disney World happen. We did our first event there in twenty eighteen. You
know, you're taking eighteen hundred people there, you're taking over a hotel,
you got all the volunteers, everybody that's a part of it. Now,
many companies and corporations and you know, just so much involved in this gigantic
event that we do there. But we also expanded. We wanted to you
know, at that time, Snowball Express was just kind of a one once
a year thing, and these are families that go off and you know they
have to wait one year for for a healing event like that. We want
we want to be in their space every single day. We want them to
know that they're they're loved and not forgotten, and that we're here to support
them. So we do community events all over the country every month with Snowball
families all over the country. So it's a big program designed to specifically wrap
our arms around the families of our fall and and make sure that they're they're
doing okay and they know that we don't forget. What's it like when you
know that the work you've done has brought such joy into a child's life who's
obviously going through a horrifically difficult time, or you're helping a wounded veteran,
or the many different areas that you do that to see the work that you're
directly doing benefit and improve people's lives, it's a good feeling. There's there's
no question why would you come back over and over and over if if you
weren't feeling like you're making an impact. And from the from the get go,
from the beginning, I saw that just being there, just showing up,
just wrapping my arms around these kids, was making an impact on them
and their families, the surviving spouse um And you know, I've been a
personal touch sort of person, go you know, put the boots on and
get them on the ground and get going. And so I've been, you
know, going to the war zones and going to the hospitals and going to
the you know, places where the families are and engaging with them. And
I've I've gotten a lot of spiritual personal enrichment from from knowing that I can
do something to help somebody. And so my staff at the Garysonese Foundation,
they know me, and they know where it operates from and they see I'm
a hugger, and and I tell them to go out there. Okay,
if I can't be there, you're my arms, and you need to go
out there and hug these kids and hug their their moms and you know,
hug these wounded folks and and just make sure that they know that you're you're
getting a hug hug from Gary. If I can't be there, and and
most of the time I can now, I mean that we're doing so much.
I can't. I can't can't be everywhere. So but my team is
I have a great group of people that they're dedicated. They seem to understand
me pretty well, and uh know how how I think about things and how
I operate, and and where this has all come from. It's come from
a long history going way way back, of trying to put my hands on
on on people who serve our country and who make tremendous sacrifices in defense of
our freedom. And I don't take that for granted. Uh, you know,
I want everybody in my foundation understand that all our ambassadors. We have
ambassadors, like thirty ambassadors that go out there and represent the foundation, our
advisory board members, our our board members. These are all people that volunteer
at their time. And then you know, again, one of the one
of the things I wanted to do by by creating a foundation was expand what
I could. I'm only one person, but I wanted to expand the reach,
you know. I wanted to create an entity, an organization that the
American people would feel they could trust send us their generous donations so that I
could build an army of dedicated, passionate people who were whose job it is
is to carry that mission forward. And we've recently moved to the Nashville area
from California, and our staff has changed up a bit. We have some
people, one of them's right over there, who's been with the Foundation for
for a long time, and then we have, you know, a whole
other group of people that are just getting started with the Foundation. But I
really feel like, you know, they're they're getting it, They're they're they're
understanding it. I don't do it for a living. I mean, I
make my living as an actor. The music I play is all for free.
The traveling, all the work for these folks is all out of the
service mission. But you can get so much more done if you if you
have an organization and a team backing you up, and I've got a great
team doing that. How did you first get involved with the National Memorial Day
Concert and why does it mean so much for you to be part of that
every year? I started doing, as I said, USO tours back in
two thousand and three and going to the basis, and then I started taking
my musicians with me in two thousand and four, and I was doing several
tours and going out as off as possible. I've known Joe Montana, you
know, since Chicago days. We both grew up there. Joe got involved.
He was asked to come to the National Memorial Day Concert in two thousand
and two of the year after September eleventh to do some segments that we focused
specifically on firepop fighters and and he, you know, he'll tell you he
didn't know about the National Memorial Day Concert until I think it was Ozzie Davis
might have mentioned it to him, and so he came, and he was
hooked in two thousand and two and then two thousand and five, and he
kept doing it, and then two thousand and five I was getting ready to
go on a USO tour overseas. I was going to military bases and playing
with my band, and I get a call from Joe and Jerry Colbert,
producer, and they said they were going to do a USO segment on the
National Memorial Day concert. Night said, what's that. I've never didn't know
we were doing a National Order to Update concert and they said, yeah,
yes, in front of the Capitol. It's on PBS. You know,
we're going to feature this segment on the USO. You're doing USO work.
Will you come and be a part of the concert and bring your band and
we'll have your band on the show. And I said, well, yeah,
this sounds great. So I started looking at looking it up and you
know, big, big show and everything. This sounds great. So we
went over to Germany and the UK and the Netherlands and we were doing shows
over there and then. And that was in May of two thousand and five,
and then we flew directly from I think the UK right to Washington,
d C. To be a part of the National Memorial. Dick gunser I
got my band. These are like band people, you know, it's it
was like a garage band for almost and here we are on the stage in
front of the Capitol and looking up at the Capitol, there's one hundred thousand
people out there, and I'm playing music in front of one hundred thousand people.
I mean, I never imagined then, but here we were. And
they also asked me to narrate, you know, a couple of segments while
I was there, So I did that, And then the next year,
two thousand and six, they called me and asked me to co host with
Joe, and of course I was in and wanted to do it and been
coming ever since. It's magnificent. And then right around that time they were
they were starting up the Memorial Day parade again, and I think they had
done one parade, and then the next year they asked me to come and
be a part of the parade after the Memorial Day concert, So I started
doing the parade after that as well. What does it mean to you last
question? To be part of two of the biggest Memorial Day celebrations and being
able to highlight the sacrifice of ourlitary men and women. It's a tremendous national
opportunity to speak to the nation on national television, to highlight these stories of
service and to remind people what Memorial Day is for the reason we have it.
And you know, for all the families that have a loved one buried
in Arlington or any other military cemetery or back at home who serve their country,
they remember each and every day. That's what we're trying to do with
the Garysonese Foundation, with our gold Star initiatives, is to remember each and
every day those sacrifices. But at the National Memorial Day Concert, we get
this tremendous opportunity to speak to the nation and to tell stories and to honor
the people that the stories are about. It. It's a tremendous moment each
year, something that I really value and feel is critically important to attend and
to be a part of. I just feel privileged to be a part of
it. Every year. Capital Concerts folks do a fantastic job pulling the stories
together and creating the show, and it's something I I've only missed two since
I started family reasons, but I wouldn't miss it for any anything else.
We thank you so much for your time today. You've been very generous with
your time and thank you. Thank you on behalf of so many people in
this country for all the selfless work that you and your team do to help
our military community. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Gary
Sineese i claimed actor and director. He's also the founder of the Gary Sineese
Foundation. He's the host of the National Memorial Bay Concert. I'm Greg Corumbus
and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi. This is Greg Corumbus and thanks for
listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more
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