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 information, please visit American Veterans Center dot org. You can also follow the
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