00:01:00.000I did three movies with Tom that year, and they were all successful, all very good movies Forrest Gump and Apollo 13.
00:01:09.000I did right after that was Tom's next movie, and I did that after Forrest Gump.
00:01:14.000And then Green Mile was a few years later, I think, but only one little part, but it was a good part, and it was a couple of days with Tom on the stage.
00:01:25.000And you were, again, just to be a part of that.
00:01:28.000Green Mile's a huge movie, it's one of my favorite Stephen King movies.
00:01:44.000The first one is called Grateful American.
00:01:47.000That came out in 19 or in 2020, 2019 actually, came out that year and it kind of documents how I got so involved with our veteran community and our first responders and all of that.
00:02:04.000I had been on so many tours overseas, USO, hospital visits, whatnot.
00:02:12.000by my agent who I'd never – this is a book agent and I'd never worked with her before, but she approached me and said, why don't you document some of this stuff that you're doing?
00:02:23.000And so I started to do that and then it turned into an autobiography.
00:02:26.000I went back through the history of my family serving in World War I, World War II, Korea era, my wife's side of the family, Vietnam, Cold War, all of that, Afghanistan.
00:02:39.000And then it just traveled all the way to the creation of the Gary Sinise Foundation, which I set up in 2011.
00:02:59.000Well, I think it was kind of different steps along the way.
00:03:04.000Again, the family on both my side, the family of veterans on my side and my wife's side of the family.
00:03:11.000Back in the 80s, because of my wife's brothers who had served in Vietnam, And her sister's husband, a combat medic, I started to get, you know, I started to spend time with them and talk to them quite a bit about what it was like for them to go and serve in Vietnam and then come home.
00:03:31.000And of course, it was a bad time to be in the service coming home from Vietnam.
00:03:35.000Yeah, maybe the first time ever in American history where people were angry at you for fighting in a war.
00:04:35.000I started raising my hand in all kinds of ways for the USO and just going out to the hospitals and visiting our wounded.
00:04:41.000And, you know, having been involved with the DAV, Disabled American Veterans, in the 90s, I was impacted greatly by the real life Lieutenant Dan's out there and wanted to help, you know, our returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
00:04:55.000And so started supporting them in various ways.
00:04:59.000And that all led to the creation of, My own foundation, which is now in its 16th year, we've raised a lot of money and deployed those resources all over the country doing all kinds of things and overseas as well.
00:05:13.000Trevor Burrus Well, that's phenomenal that you put so much energy and effort into that because Lord knows they need it and I'm sure they appreciate it because it's especially in today's day and age, it's such a divided country.
00:05:33.000Least we should be able to love and respect and take care of the people that sacrifice everything, put their life on the line to serve our country.
00:05:43.000I mean, it is the ultimate sacrifice, and it gets, you know, depending on whether or not you agree with the war or whether or not you agree with the president and whether or not you'd agree with the political movement of the time, you know, that's how people feel about the military themselves, and I think that's terrible.
00:06:06.000I remember what it was like to come home from Vietnam.
00:06:09.000I was greatly impacted by the veterans that I met coming home from Vietnam.
00:06:14.000I was 18 years old in 1973, the end of combat operations in Vietnam.
00:06:21.000And then I met my wife's brothers, and they started to really tell me what it was like to serve in Vietnam and come home to feel like the nation had abandoned them and crapped on them.
00:06:37.000That is a motivator for me to kind of take up the charge with those who deployed in reaction to the horrific attack that we all witnessed on September 11th.
00:06:48.000We had a lot of people raising their hands after that and going off to serve, and they started getting hurt.
00:06:57.000I just felt called to try to do something to help them and to try to ensure that if they were going to return from war, that they would return to a grateful nation.
00:07:28.000Then we went into Iraq, and the nation started, it had come together after September 11th, and it started to divide and split again.
00:07:37.000And you could see one side was supportive of George Bush and what he was trying to do in Iraq.
00:07:42.000And then there was a whole other side that was, you know, really not in support of it.
00:07:48.000But having so many Vietnam veterans in my family and remembering what it was like for them to get caught in the middle of that crap, I didn't want that to happen to our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
00:08:00.000So, you know, at a certain point, I just started raising my hand and saying, hey, I want to go visit them and let them know that there are people that care about them and appreciate them.
00:08:11.000And that turned into just a life mission.
00:08:15.000I don't ever want somebody who volunteers to serve our country.
00:08:20.000go into harm's way, sacrifice limbs and lose friends and all of that to ever feel like nobody cares about that.
00:08:30.000We should protect and defend our defenders.
00:12:04.000I'm like, it might have been eighth grade, which makes more sense because I was in Jamaica Plain and it was a little bit of a sketchy neighborhood, but I'm not sure.
00:12:12.000Either way, this guy, this was my first experience with anybody that had been through Vietnam, whether it was eighth grade or ninth grade, different schools.
00:12:29.000And then as I got older and saw a bunch of movies on Vietnam and, you know, saw Apocalypse Now, and it's like, oh, Jesus.
00:12:36.000Like, you just think of war as World War II soldiers going over there to fight the Nazis and, you know, and stop evil from progressing across the globe.
00:12:49.000And we remember that photo of the Navy sailor kissing that lady in Times Square.
00:12:55.000It's like one of the most iconic photos in history, right?
00:13:52.000So you look at all those movies, Joe, and if you look at all those movies, Just like Apocalypse Now, you just wonder, I don't think these Vietnam veterans are going to be okay at the end of this film, right?0.99
00:14:14.000We'd never seen a Vietnam veteran come home, process all his anger, process, you know, isolate himself through booze and, you know, loneliness and all that anger, all the things that were going on with Lieutenant Dan.
00:14:28.000But what happens at the end of that story?
00:14:39.000We hadn't seen that positive story about a Vietnam veteran.
00:14:42.000I think that's in some ways why so many Vietnam veterans kind of appreciate that story because, yes, there were those who came home from Vietnam and isolated themselves.
00:15:02.000And we heard that story over and over again, but we never heard the story of the guy who came home from war, was able to kind of process the war years and move beyond them.
00:15:13.000And that's, of course, that's the story we want for anybody who goes off to war.
00:15:18.000We want them to come home and be okay.
00:15:23.000And I think part of the reason why we like it is because we know it's so unlikely, because it's so difficult to come back from that and re-emerce and just re-enter society.
00:15:34.000And this is the thing that I found most shocking when I got older and I met a lot of military guys, specifically through jujitsu, through martial arts.
00:15:47.000And the thing that astounded me the most is how little help they get in re-emerging or re-entering into society.
00:15:54.000And that you go from being involved in firefights every day and breaching buildings and shooting terrorists, and then all of a sudden you're back in regular life.
00:16:06.000And it doesn't make any sense, and no one's telling you how to deal with this.
00:16:28.000To take a regular person and just put them through boot camp, give them some training, and then have them go kill people, and then a few years later, here they are back.
00:16:38.000Work in an insurance company, just sitting at a desk.
00:18:15.000Things like that that do happen today.
00:18:19.000Think back to what it was like to come home from Vietnam and have no services at all and have the nation be completely, you know, I had people that had bags of crap thrown on them when they got off the airplane and whatnot.
00:18:32.000Today, there are multiple services provided.
00:18:36.000You know, there are thousands of nonprofits that have emerged since September 11, 2001, that are out there trying to fill the gaps where the government kind of falls down and we don't have enough support.
00:18:48.000So there are is support out there for a lot of people.
00:18:51.000Unfortunately, many of our service members that come home, they don't seek it out.
00:19:11.000Mental wellness is a big part of what we do at the Gary Sinise Foundation.
00:19:15.000And I know a lot of people that are in that business to make sure that, like you're.
00:19:22.000Your teacher, who's containing all that stuff, he's not talking about it, he's keeping all that in.
00:19:29.000We want to provide opportunities for them to tell their stories and come out.
00:19:34.000The more they talk about what they've been through, the better it is, the better the chance that we save somebody from doing something bad to themselves.
00:19:45.000I mean, it's one of the things that I've learned through jujitsu in particular so many guys who came over there and needed something to really push them and test themselves and just release the demons and get out all the pent up anxiety and that.
00:20:02.000Extreme physical exertion in jiu jitsu and also the camaraderie of jiu jitsu really helped them with a lot of that.
00:20:12.000You know, if you've seen a lot of buddies go down, you know, you've seen a lot of bad stuff and you come home and just try to go on with life, I think it's difficult.
00:20:24.000The one thing that I will say is my wife had two brothers.1.00
00:20:29.000One died of cancer in 1983, but he was a West Pointer.
00:20:36.000Went as a platoon leader, a lieutenant, then went back as a captain, a company commander, came back, taught at West Point as a major, was teaching at Fort Leavenworth.
00:21:07.000and got out, and he didn't have the community around him.
00:21:11.000You know, the older brother had the military community around him.
00:21:16.000All these guys had served in Vietnam, they're all around each other.
00:21:19.000They're still serving in the army, whatever it is.
00:21:22.000But the younger brother came out, and he got out of the service and tried to do exactly that, you know, go work in a, you know, he ended up being a prison guard and ended up doing these, just trying to get a job.
00:22:02.000Yeah, it's just like the task of coming back and reintegrating and Completely makes sense that someone who stays in the military can adjust to it much better.
00:22:13.000You're just used to being around other people.
00:22:15.000There's a lot of camaraderie and community.
00:22:17.000People being around other people that are experiencing the same thing you're experiencing.
00:22:21.000Or experienced, you know, because they went to war together.
00:22:49.000I mean, think about our Afghanistan veterans.
00:22:51.00020 years in Afghanistan, and we give it back to the Taliban, along with $80 billion of hardware, American military equipment.
00:23:02.000And you've got a lot of Afghanistan veterans who lost a lot of buddies, saw a lot of bad stuff, went through difficult, difficult things saying, Why did we do all that?
00:23:21.000It was like the I mean, I don't want to look at this as charitably as possible, but it was one of the stupidest fucking decisions I think I've ever seen to just leave all that stuff there and just abandon, just do it all in one sweep where people are climbing on top of airplanes and falling from the sky.0.97
00:23:40.000And this is a lot of these people are people that cooperated with our troops while they were over there people who were translators, people who helped them, people who worked with our troops, and then they just abandoned those people there.0.99
00:25:21.000I mean, just because it's September 11th, don't do that.
00:25:25.000That date means a lot to this country.
00:25:26.000I mean, to leave in a terrible way, On the day that marks the reason why we went there when we shouldn't have even really been there?
00:25:36.000I have very good friends, special forces guys, who were very involved in trying to do something to get people out of there during that time.
00:25:47.000My buddy Scott Mann, lieutenant colonel, he served over there, had a lot of Afghan allies that he was a special forces guy, so they work in tandem with our Afghan allies and whatnot.
00:26:00.000And all of a sudden, he's out of the service and he's sitting back here and he.
00:26:04.000jumped in with something called Operation Pineapple Express to try to get a lot of people out of there.
00:26:11.000They did their best and they were really hurting.
00:26:14.000I mean, these guys were hurting and they didn't know what to do and they did their best to get people out through various networks and whatnot.
00:26:25.000And they did get some people out and that was important, but they felt terrible for the ones that they couldn't get out.
00:26:32.000It was just a very, very sad and tragic thing, I think.
00:26:35.000So you've got a lot of Afghanistan veterans that are in a lot of pain, and we want to help them through.
00:26:41.000We don't want them to think that their service, you know, was in vain or anything.
00:26:46.000There were people that were free for a period of time because they were there, and that's a good thing.
00:27:23.000It's just, I mean, why would anybody trust us after that?
00:27:27.000You know, if you're in a country that Americans come in, they say, hey, work for us, even though you live here, work for us, and we're going to help you get rid of this terrorist organization that's running your country.
00:28:29.000And I want these people to know that, okay, regardless of government decisions that may have gone wrong and whatnot, and they may have been affected by those things, there are grateful Americans out there.
00:28:50.000That was one of my great motivators back in the early days of, you know, after September 11th, is to make sure that they knew that they had support services and there were people that cared about them.
00:29:03.000And you could see the nation starting to split and divide once we went into Iraq and things were saying, all of a sudden, you know, it was a bad time to be in the service.
00:29:13.000And the news was always bad news and everything like that.
00:29:17.000I was going over to the war zones at that time and I was seeing.
00:29:21.000A completely different side of what was going on when I went there.
00:29:25.000For example, in 2003, I went to Iraq twice in 2003.
00:29:31.000And the first tour was something called Project Salute.
00:29:36.000And we were on a big entertainment tour.
00:29:38.000Kid Rock was on the tour, and Leanne Womack, and Paul Rodriguez, and Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and all I mean, football players, basketball.
00:31:12.000You see these kids just hugging on these soldiers and the soldiers picking up the kids, and it was just, it was very heartwarming.
00:31:19.000The four of us ended up singing, You Are My Sunshine, to a classroom full of kids, and they didn't know what we were saying, but they were laughing at us.
00:32:50.000We started a program called Operation Iraqi Children.
00:32:53.000Eventually, we turned it into Operation International Children because we were shipping to Afghanistan and Djibouti and Haiti and all these different places where our troops were deployed.
00:33:04.000The motto of it was helping soldiers help children.0.92
00:33:07.000We wanted to provide these materials for our soldiers to take out into these communities that could be very hostile.
00:33:15.000Let's say, you know, the convoy moves in and guys with guns get out, and the community is like, very suspicious and very hostile.
00:33:23.000But when they pull in and start unloading all these boxes of stuffed animals and school supplies, all of a sudden the community comes out.
00:33:31.000And we had people write us letters saying, your supplies helped to save lives.
00:33:39.000We delivered your supplies to an Iraqi village.
00:33:45.000And two days later, we were going down the same road, and the kids ran out and waved and stopped our convoy and pointed down the road.
00:33:55.000And the kids that got those supplies just two or three days later saved that convoy from getting blown up.
00:34:01.000And we got a lot of letters like that from people that were serving in our military who were very, very grateful that the American people supported Operation International Children and provided these school supplies.
00:34:16.000You weren't hearing anything about these kinds of things at a certain point during Iraq.
00:34:52.000And say what you want about who decides where we go to war and what happens.
00:34:58.000Happens, I can't think of another army that would do that other than the American army that would go in and bring school supplies and set up programs to try to help kids.
00:35:11.000Regardless of whether or not you think you should have been there or you think it's a good idea to be in that war, that's a very uniquely charitable thing to do.
00:35:24.000It kind of reminds you of the GIs going through the German. towns that we just decimated with just multiple bombs everywhere, carpet bombing everywhere, and then walking through those towns and handing out pencils and chocolate and trying to engage the community.
00:35:44.000This was very much a hearts and minds project, just trying to provide our troops with something that would let them know that we're thinking about them back home and we're sending them these things, but also that would help them You know, engage with the communities that they were going through over there.
00:36:05.000What was it like for you to have been there and see things like that, but then come back and see the news and see this version of it where it's obviously, especially the news on television, there's a very limited amount of time.
00:36:21.000Obviously, there's a lot of different things going on there all at once, and the things that are going to get people to pay the most attention are the horrific ones.
00:37:35.000I just felt pretty bad about that, you know, that the purpose for the convoy was eliminated from the story, but all we saw was the gunfight.
00:37:45.000And that was the way our troops were feeling.
00:37:48.000Like, hey, we're doing a lot of good things over here to try to help people through this difficult situation.
00:37:55.000And all it looks like on the nightly news is that, you know, it's all going to hell.
00:38:11.000But as a citizen, I can control trying to help them through that experience.
00:38:17.000And that's what our programs were like.
00:38:19.000And I think, as I said, we heard from a lot of people that the programs were very, very helpful.
00:38:25.000That particular school supply program lasted for about nine years.
00:38:31.000It was a program that started in 2004 and went to whatever that, 2012 or something like that.
00:38:40.000And it was a very, very positive program.
00:38:43.000And there were lots of programs like that from people here in the States that just felt like they had to do something to help these service members through a very, very difficult situation.
00:38:56.000Yeah, it's got to be extremely frustrating when you're over there and you're seeing the news and you see this one version of what's happening.
00:39:02.000And part of it, I think, is almost inevitable because the news, just the format of what they're doing by covering a certain amount of things over a one hour period of time, they just don't have any time.
00:39:14.000And they have commercial breaks, and it's like, and then you have editors.
00:39:18.000And the editor's job is to get the most ratings possible.
00:39:21.000And the most ratings, what does that mean?
00:39:23.000Make things exciting, put a bunch of dun dun dun, a bunch of crazy music, lights.
00:39:30.000Keep people locked in and then show them something disturbing.
00:39:34.000And then, if the sort of the narrative in the country is that this war is a disaster and everything's going wrong, the last thing you want to do is show a positive story from the war.
00:40:03.000Yeah, that was hard for me to hear because I felt like one role that I had to play was to talk to people about what I saw firsthand by going to the war zones and going to the hospitals and meeting and engaging with the troops and the people that were serving our country.
00:40:24.000Not everybody can go over to the war zone and visit the troops and everything, but I could.
00:40:32.000Lieutenant Dan showing up on a military base was uplifting to the troops.
00:40:38.000And then I could come back and talk about what I'd witnessed and all the courageous things that I'd seen and the good work that I saw them doing.
00:40:46.000And I wanted people to know about that.
00:40:47.000I felt the way that I could serve was just by talking about what I saw.
00:41:10.000I mean, that's what people think about instead of someone who does something that's very selfless and is probably way more rewarding and it probably enriches your soul, like who you are as a person, far more than anything you're ever going to get from.
00:41:26.000Celebrity can have a purpose beyond yourself.
00:41:28.000You know, I'm grateful that I had, you know, I've had good opportunities and fun opportunities.
00:41:38.000You talked about some of them earlier.
00:41:41.000Great opportunities in the movie business.
00:41:43.000I was on television for 11 years, CSI New York, and then I did Criminal Minds Beyond Borders.
00:41:49.000Hollywood's been, you know, I had a lot of good, wonderful experiences with a lot of great, great folks.
00:41:56.000And thankfully, I, you know, I had some success and I did well, made some money, had to have a public profile that I can talk about things.
00:42:07.000I'll tell you though, you know, I've been doing this a long time.
00:44:54.000I think I mentioned Leanne Womack, Paul Rodriguez.
00:44:57.000There was another band named Nappy Roots was on that tour.
00:45:01.000football players, basketball players, Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and I was Lieutenant Dan, you know, and I would just go out and shake hands and take pictures, sign autographs, you know, Lieutenant Dan, you know, tell them stories and sit with them and visit with them and whatnot.
00:45:21.000I remember my first trip was we did a lot in Kuwait, and then we got on C-130 and we went up to Baghdad, and we landed at the airport, and Kid Rock was on that C-130.
00:45:46.000And there are thousands and thousands of troops lined up from the airplane where the airplane put all the way into this giant hangar where there must have been 5,000 troops in there sweating.
00:46:45.000We have footage on my website, garrisoniefoundation.org, our YouTube, where you can see like there was a video out, 20th anniversary of my first trip to Iraq.
00:46:57.000That was the first big trip, and it was incredible that day to do that.
00:47:03.000And then I got home that night, and we get a call Tommy Franks, General Franks, who was running the whole war in Afghanistan and Iraq, wants to take a small group back up to Baghdad, and he wanted me to be on that.
00:47:21.000So it was a handful of people De Nero was there Uh Stamos, John Stamos and Rebecca Romaine Stamos were there.
00:47:29.000A handful of people were on that and we went up and then we went into Baghdad proper.
00:47:35.000Right, we spent that whole day at the airport the day before we went in and we went to the palaces and we saw the palaces that we were now occupying and that was eye-opening.
00:47:47.000We saw a lot of troops, did a lot of handshaking, picture taking, all that kind of stuff.
00:49:31.000And surrounding us in that convoy were gunships.
00:49:36.000We had, I remember looking out the window, I had a helmet on, flak jacket, all that stuff, and gunships are just flying along with the convoy on both sides.
00:49:45.000There must have been four or five gunships protecting the convoy.
00:50:35.000About, like, the evil son of an evil king doing terrible things.0.98
00:50:42.000That they would just find a woman who was getting married, they would take her from her husband, kill her husband, take her, rape her, feed her to dogs.1.00
00:51:02.000I mean, it was that kind of intimidating the population to the point where they just submit and now they're just living in fear all the time of the Supreme Later.
00:51:12.000There's an account, I can't remember if it was a book or just a long article, but I read a passage from it where there was a doctor who was treating whether it was Uday or Kuse, I don't remember which one, got shot a bunch of times and he had to get a bunch of physical therapy.
00:51:29.000So some doctor was going over there and taking care of him.0.68
00:51:33.000And the doctor told it was like he acted completely normal, like you would never know he was a monster.
00:53:04.000And it was very, very strange because outside of the Victory Over America Palace, it was under construction when the invasion happened, were French construction cranes.
00:56:50.000And I remember one soldier who was showing us around told me that the farmers would just come in and see this palace and see what he was building while the people were starving.
00:57:02.000And the farmers didn't have any water.
00:57:03.000And they didn't even know that some of that water was there.
00:57:07.000But they came in and saw that palace and saw all that water, water that they didn't have to water their own crops and everything like that.
00:57:14.000And they would just break down and fall down and cry.
00:57:18.000With such rage, you know, he really was an oppressor.
00:57:22.000He really was an oppressor, and he's not unique in history.
00:57:24.000That's what's really crazy is that there's so many people when they get to that kind of a position, or is it the type of people that get to that position in the first place are just like that, which is horrible.0.91
00:57:38.000It's a horrible idea that the only kind of people that are going to rise to power are ruthless, driven psychopaths.
00:58:52.000One Korean soldier walked up to me, and all that's between us is this little cinderbok thing about a foot high, and I'm standing there, and he's standing right this close, you and I, and I'm staring into the eyes of.0.79
00:59:07.000Of this slave, and he's got no idea, and he starts taking pictures of me.0.91
00:59:12.000You know, he came down, there's a building up here, and they spy on you.
00:59:38.000Half of it is on the North Korean side, that blue building there.
00:59:44.000And the other half is on the South Korean side.
00:59:47.000And there's a table in the middle of it, in the middle of the building, and the South Koreans can come in and sit on their side of the table, and the North Koreans can come in and sit on their side of the table, and they have little meetings and things like that.
01:03:49.000I think it's a really interesting intellectual sort of exercise like this idea that you are a product of everything that's ever happened to you and it's determinism.
01:04:01.000All these things have taken place your genetics, where you're born, what you experienced, all these different things.
01:04:42.000I wrote my book, Grateful American, because I am grateful that I'm here in this country and I'm grateful for the men and women who provide that freedom for us so that I've been able to pick and choose some of the things that I wanted to do in this life.
01:04:59.000We have a military that is there to protect that, whereas a military like the North Korean military, they are there to take that away from you.0.94
01:06:27.000Everyone likes to think that they are capable of not ever falling into these traps that you see so many human beings fall, that we're all uniquely wise and uniquely different.0.72
01:06:40.000Just imagine those kids being raised by a psychotic dictator like that.0.54
01:06:58.000It's uh, you watch them, you watch like cool things that they do.
01:07:03.000You're like, oh, I know where they learned that.
01:07:04.000And then if you're a murderer, you know, then they think, oh, it's cool to kill people, yeah, it's fun to just pick somebody up off the street and say, today's the last day of your life, boom, yeah, and just laugh and go have a beer, feed them to the lions, and yeah, feed them to the lions, and no consequences.
01:07:22.000I mean, we all would like to think that there's no way that you would enjoy that.
01:07:28.000There's no way that you would become those people.
01:09:31.000That's inside the palace there that was bombed out.
01:09:34.000It's also interesting because this is kind of the first time in history where we get a real detailed look inside of like the palace of an evil dictator.
01:09:46.000Like you really get to see inside of it.
01:09:49.000Whereas in history, we just have stories.
01:09:51.000We have stories of how people lived and what they did, but this is you get to see his throne, see the pictures on the wall.
01:10:39.000I just, I'm sure, I mean, people are looking around, and all of a sudden, we're occupying the palaces, right?
01:10:46.000And the dictator's on the run, he was on the run at that time, you know.
01:10:50.000How long after that did they catch him?
01:10:51.000Not too long after I was there in 03 and the 4th ID from Fort Hood actually, they were the ones I believe that captured him under General Ray Odierno.
01:11:11.000I went to Fort Hood in April of 2004 and the 4th had just come back and they were the ones that found him in the spider hole and dug him out.
01:11:24.000And got him, you know, they captured him.
01:11:27.000So it was somewhere between November of uh 03 and April.
01:11:33.000I don't know, you could probably find the date.
01:12:49.000I mean, the military made a deck of cards that had all the Saddam and all his leaders, all his top generals and everything, all their faces on these cards.
01:12:58.000And they handed them out to troops all over the place.0.92
01:14:16.000Didn't his sons try to leave the country with like a million dollars in cash too?
01:14:20.000I stumbled across a picture of like the proof of death that they posted in like the New York Times of one of his sons dying when I was looking for photos earlier.
01:15:06.000There's parts of the world like North Korea, there's parts of the world like Kuwait or Afghanistan or where they're in trouble, where there's people invading them, where there's All kinds of shit going on.0.98
01:15:18.000We're just extraordinarily lucky that we're separated on oceans on the east and west coast.0.74
01:16:41.000So for people that don't think a military is necessary, for people that it's maybe not necessary in your neighborhood, Right.
01:16:48.000But just understand, the world is a very dangerous place still, and not much less dangerous out there than it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago in a lot of places.
01:17:22.000And so we need to support them no matter what.
01:17:24.000We don't have any control over where they go once they sign up, but we do have control over how we treat them and how we support them.
01:17:33.000Unfortunately, this country is so oddly divided left and right that for a lot of people, support for the military and support for veterans is a very right wing idea, whereas Hollywood is a very left wing place.
01:18:39.000But when I got back, I decided to go into CSI New York.
01:18:43.000I had that show for nine years, and it came right at the right time because I wanted to, in my book, Grateful American, the chapter is called Perfect Timing, and it's the CSI New York timing chapter, which I talk about ramping up everything I wanted to do for the military and trying to do my best to help them through, and at the same time having this public platform on a weekly television series and how perfect that was at the time.
01:19:12.000And I just kept working, kept working hard on the TV show.
01:19:17.000Didn't feel a lot of, you know, I tried to tell everybody, hey, I'm going on a trip next week.
01:19:35.000I never really felt, I don't think that People didn't think that that was a good thing for me to do.
01:19:41.000They may have had a lot of difficulty with George Bush at the time, who was, you know, when I was first really getting involved in going on trips, he was the president.
01:19:52.000And there were people in the business that didn't like him or, you know, didn't agree with him or whatever.
01:19:58.000But I wasn't going to let that dissuade me from supporting the troops because I remember what it was like, again, for our Vietnam veterans to get caught in the middle of all that.
01:20:09.000Political stuff, and I didn't want that to happen.
01:20:31.000And I was playing, you know, it was great.
01:20:33.000My detective on that show, Mac Taylor, was a Marine.
01:20:40.000And he was a Beirut veteran who was at the Beirut bombing in 1983 where we lost 241 service members.
01:20:50.000And we made him, I wanted to make him a Beirut veteran.
01:20:54.000So we even had episodes where I talked a lot about what was going on there.
01:20:59.000And he was not only a Beirut veteran, but he was a 9-11 family member.
01:21:04.000I wanted to make him somebody who had lost his wife on September 11th at the World Trade Center.
01:21:12.000So, I felt honored to be able to represent those 9 11 families and also veterans that, you know, we forget about what happened in Beirut, but that was a very, very bad day for the country during the Reagan administration when we lost so many to an Iranian terrorist bomb bombing.
01:21:31.000And, you know, I just wanted to draw some attention to that.
01:21:34.000So, I've been able to use the platform for, you know, to do some good out there.
01:21:38.000That's very cool that they let you put that into the storyline.
01:21:42.000I had forgotten about Beirut until you just brought it up.
01:21:45.000You know, I didn't remember that attack.
01:22:48.000Yeah, this has been going on a long time.
01:22:50.000You know, we've lost a lot of people over the proxies and all that that they've supported over the years.
01:22:58.000You know, look, again, I just want anybody who serves our country to know that there's grateful people out there and we don't take what they're going through for granted.
01:23:10.000We want to help them through and we want them to be okay.
01:23:13.000That's what we do every day at the Gary Sinise Foundation.
01:23:16.000That's a beautiful thing that you do, man.
01:23:28.000And again, especially from someone who's a movie star.
01:23:33.000Although, I got to say, having these conversations with people, like, you know, I mean, I've talked to so many actors on this podcast that turned out to be really cool.
01:23:41.000Or I was a little hesitant, you know, I was like, Because I've had very good experiences with actors in Hollywood, but also some ones that weren't so fun.
01:24:45.000We would put a, I remember bringing a shoebox in.
01:24:48.000And one of our first plays that we did, I was like 18, and I wrote donations on the side of the shoebox and we put it in the lobby and hoped people would throw some money in so we could, you know, do another play after that.
01:25:01.000And now, if you look at it, we've done hundreds of plays all over the world, you know, won a lot of awards.
01:25:09.000We built a building from the ground up.
01:25:52.000So two years later, you started a theater company.
01:25:55.000You had a lot of get up and go, I'll tell you that.
01:25:57.000I was a sophomore in high school when I did my first play, and then I graduated from high school when I was 18, and I didn't want to go to college.
01:26:10.000I was just really struggling as a student.
01:26:13.000In fact, I had to go back to high school for an extra semester because I didn't have enough credits to graduate.
01:26:20.000So I went back for another semester, did another play.
01:26:47.000And if you look at the early history of Steppenwolf, it goes, that's 50 years ago in 1976.
01:26:54.000I teamed up with the co-founders of the theater are Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney.
01:27:00.000But then they went to college with John Malkovich, Lori Metcalf, Joan Allen, who was nominated for like three Oscars, and the woman who would become my wife just five years later, Moira.
01:32:40.000After he took his bow, he reached back and he grabbed me and he pulled me up to the front to stand with all the lead characters and take a bow.
01:32:49.000Nobody in the audience knew what that was about, but everybody on stage knew that the kid crying, who was barely making it through high school, had had my life changed in a significant way.
01:33:02.000And from that point on, I just wanted to do plays.
01:33:06.000And I became, you know, a top theater student and, you know, got a lot of good parts in high school.
01:33:13.000And then that's where Steppenwolf came from.
01:33:15.000We teamed up with my pals and we just started a theater company after that.
01:33:21.000So, that one moment where that lady came up to you and said you should audition, what a crazy fork in the road.
01:33:51.000And I remember when my first book, Grateful American, came out, she was living in Nashville, and I stayed in touch with her over the years.
01:33:58.000I mean, without her, I don't think Steppenwolf Theater would have existed because she fired us all up, and I just wanted to do plays.
01:34:07.000And then now you have a giant building on the north side of Chicago, and it started with high school kids.
01:34:13.000And I remember my book coming out, Grateful American, and I was on a book tour like I am now.
01:34:21.000I called her up and said, I'm coming to Nashville.
01:35:46.000There's a lot of people out there that just need a thing.
01:35:50.000They need a thing where they can put their energy into that rewards them and shows them that they're valuable and that they can contribute.
01:36:00.000And that they can really make something beautiful.
01:36:03.000And so many people never find that thing, or they're never exposed to it, or life gets too complicated before they ever get a chance to spread their wings and take a chance with something like that.
01:36:14.000You're very fortunate if you find something as a young person.
01:36:45.000But I think it's possible for a lot more people to never experience it.
01:36:51.000And I really wish there was more things like that out there and more just some guidance, some direction.
01:37:00.000Push people in certain directions because there's so many people out there that just get stagnant and they don't know what to do, and then they spend all their time partying and hanging out with their friends and they never find it.
01:37:31.000It's very heartening and hopeful when you meet a lot of these youngsters who are going to West Point, who are going to Annapolis, who are going to the Air Force Academy, Merchant Marine Academy, Coast Guard.
01:37:43.000And every time I come away, just feeling, wow, there's an impressive group of young people out there.
01:37:49.000And I'm sure it's not only at the military academies, but these are folks that knew what they wanted to do coming out of high school, right?
01:38:33.000And at the Gary Sinise Foundation, too, we're trying to – one of my objectives there is to nourish and nurture a new generation of grateful Americans and to teach them about service and volunteerism and what that can do for you as a person.
01:38:52.000You know, gives life great purpose when you reach out and touch somebody and lift them up and help them.
01:38:57.000That's what I've tried to do at the foundation and just in many decades of life, just trying to give back to people that I feel, you know, that are deserving of that.
01:39:10.000And so we take one of the programs that we had at the foundation is called Soaring Valor.
01:39:18.000We've taken hundreds of World War II veterans down to the National World War II Museum.
01:39:24.000That's where our National World War II Museum is.
01:39:30.000Anybody who's going to New Orleans, I always tell them to go to the National World War II Museum.
01:39:35.000Well, we've sponsored probably 1,500, 1,600 World War II veterans, along with American Airlines, who provides all the travel for us.
01:39:45.000We have a great partnership with them.
01:39:48.000They really are dedicated to our veterans.
01:39:52.00033 charter airplane trips with World War II veterans.
01:39:57.000We put them on the airplanes, and then I wanted to add a component where we pair them up with high school kids.
01:40:04.000So if you're a 16 year old kid, you meet Mr. Johnson, and he served at Iwo Jima, you're going to be a travel buddy with Mr. Johnson for the next three days.
01:40:15.000We're going to take you down, and you're going to spend time with him.
01:40:18.000That is a life changing experience for a lot of these kids.
01:40:22.000And we've seen, like I said, for 10 years, we sent World War II veterans and students down to the National World War II Museum.
01:40:30.000Now we send them to Ground Zero in New York, to the Trade Center.
01:40:36.000We send them to the Pentagon to learn about what happened at the Pentagon.
01:40:42.000We send them to Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
01:40:44.000We send them to the Medal of Honor Museum in Texas, in Arlington.
01:40:49.000So we want to teach them about service and volunteerism and what it takes to keep us free.
01:40:55.000So they come away from those places feeling like, gosh.
01:40:59.000Why didn't I know really that much about what happened on September 11th?
01:41:04.000Because they're not getting, they're not learning about that significant event and how that changed the landscape for so many of us.
01:41:12.000Because, you know, many of them, I mean, they weren't born then.
01:41:15.000So now it's up to us to kind of educate.
01:41:18.000And we want to be a part of, you know, just nourishing.
01:41:48.000But I think that there's something about the incredibly challenging environment of the military that is an amazing vehicle for developing young people.
01:41:57.000And it, because I think young people in particular need to be challenged so that they understand their potential.
01:42:04.000And there's a lot that comes out of that where these guys, they come out, they can do things that other people can't do.
01:42:10.000One of the reasons why is because they learn.
01:43:21.000Yeah, there's a lot of hardware there, holy and so you have to imagine like, what caliber of person was that that he impressed the leaders so much on the ship that they would entrust him to take that job and and do that job it was.
01:44:12.000But for that moment in time, he can always look back and say, I got to steer the Ronald Reagan around the Persian Gulf, at least for that moment.
01:44:21.000That's incredible because think of the average 19-year-old today.0.98
01:44:24.000What the fuck are they doing in comparison to that guy?0.95
01:44:29.000I mean, that is an insanely difficult thing to just be responsible for.0.99
01:44:36.000You're responsible for 5,000 people on a boat that you can land a plane on.
01:44:43.000Yeah, you wonder if they said, just hold it here and go straight, don't turn.
01:44:48.000I mean, how long do you have to train?
01:44:49.000It's like that seems crazy that you could be 19 and have already trained your way to the position where they let you steer that thing.
01:45:39.000And I think extraordinary people gravitate towards those kind of challenges, but going through those kind of challenges makes extraordinary people.
01:45:47.000Yeah, and I just don't think that resource is used enough or gets enough credit.
01:45:53.000I mean, it's one of the things my friend Evan from Black Rifle Coffee really emphasizes is that they hire veterans, they use veterans, they give to veterans, they give to a bunch of different veteran causes and organizations, first responders.
01:46:06.000They're involved in a lot of different things.
01:46:09.000Just to like sort of emphasize that, to let people know that we care and we understand and we support you.
01:46:17.000And there are some great programs out there.
01:46:18.000Transitioning from the military, if you've been in the military for a long time and you're used to that lifestyle and all of that, transitioning out of the military into the civilian sector and kind of just, you know, figuring that out, that can be challenging for folks.
01:46:34.000And there are some great programs out there that are helping our veterans kind of navigate that transition from, you know, 20, 30 years in the military to something new.
01:46:44.000We're grateful out there and we want them to know that we are and we want them to be okay.
01:46:50.000Well, I'm really glad that you do what you do and that you have this message and you continue to spread this message on all these different interviews that you do because so many people just kind of don't appreciate it or understand it.0.98
01:47:03.000And I think it's just without it, we're fucked.0.60
01:47:07.000Like without those people, they're like some of the best people that we have, best young people that we have in this country.0.98
01:47:50.000I mean, that's why there was such a giant shift between 1945 and then the 1960s in Vietnam.
01:47:57.000It's like 20 years later, you have this complete polar opposite reaction to military.
01:48:04.000I think we learned some hard lessons from what happened to our veterans when they came home from Vietnam.
01:48:10.000That's why there are thousands and thousands of nonprofits that have popped up after September 11th and our deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
01:48:22.000We're motivated to ensure that what happened to our current day service members deploying to those war zones would not happen like what happened to our Vietnam veterans when they came home.
01:48:51.000This is one of the things that I went to the White House to talk to Trump about, about pushing it through.
01:48:57.000Getting that, and there's so many veterans that have had that experience, and it's helped them just sort of re enter society, help them deal with their demons, help them overcome alcoholism and addiction to pills.
01:49:13.000I know some people that's been very helpful for them, yeah.
01:49:16.000Yeah, and it's that I think is it gives me a lot of hope that that's going to be available to more people.
01:49:26.000Just I know so many people that have come back from that.
01:49:28.000Just nothing helps, nothing worked until they did that.
01:49:36.000Yeah, and you have several people that are just dealing with a lot of bad stuff.
01:49:42.000There's a very aggressive and it can never be too aggressive, I don't think, effort to try to address this terrible suicide problem that we have, of course, in the services and in our veteran community.
01:50:20.000And that's why you hear, gosh, somebody took their life, and even their wife didn't know what was really going on, or best friends didn't know, or whatever.
01:50:32.000There were no signs whatsoever or something like that.
01:50:35.000So how do you combat that when somebody's dealing with something that they won't reveal?
01:50:41.000I think it's up to peer to peer support.
01:50:49.000You have battle buddies in the war that you're close with.
01:50:53.000When you get home, those battle buddies, when they're with you and they're still with you and checking on each other and all of that stuff, that can be life saving, those battle buddies.
01:51:24.000And I think that the culture of, for lack of a better term, manhood, that men think that it's better to be stoic and to try to keep it all to yourself and just deal with it and seek help.
01:52:21.000That if I had just talked to them, if I had been there, I think I could have prevented it.
01:52:26.000Many, yeah, many feel like that, but you don't know.
01:52:30.000You don't know if you could have, you know.
01:52:33.000But if we're proactive, you know, that's the thing proactive, we're trying to make sure that somebody knows that there are services out there.
01:52:43.000We're dealing with people all the time at the Gary Sinise Foundation who are going through difficult things, and we have multiple services that we provide.
01:52:53.000And if we don't do it at the Gary Sinise Foundation, we can provide information about other organizations that are very deeply committed to ensuring that, you know, service members that might be dealing with something difficult know that there's a place for them to turn.
01:53:11.000We don't want those sad stories, and we have to be proactive in what we do, you know.
01:53:17.000And so that's one of the things that I can do.
01:53:19.000You know, I can talk about things on radio and television and podcasts.
01:53:26.000You know, all of that, let people know that there are services out there that can be provided.
01:53:31.000And I, you know, I hope that by doing that, that's a way that I can serve the community just by passing on information and letting people know that they are cared for, they're appreciated, and we don't want them to struggle by themselves.
01:55:08.000When those kids get together and they engage in that community and they see that there's a big community out there of kids that are all going through the same kind of thing, they may cry a little bit, of course, missing their mom and dad, but they're hugging each other and they're bonding with other people that are going through the same thing.
01:55:27.000It is profoundly impactful for these families.
01:55:30.000And we do it for families of fallen first responders, too firefighters, police officers that have lost.
01:55:36.000in the line of duty and leave children behind.
01:55:39.000And we bring them to Disney and do the same thing for them.
01:56:17.000Well, you're worthy of our attention because your parent served our country and they had fatigue.
01:56:25.000Something happened to them and they were a casualty of war.
01:56:30.000And so we want these kids to know that we don't forget about them.
01:56:34.000And this program has helped a lot of children, a lot of families.
01:56:38.000Go through a lot of, who are going through a lot of difficult things, and I show up and I play, my band plays for for the kids every year.
01:56:45.000I've been doing it 20 years now and it's a big, rewarding thing to be able to take these, these families, and again we have hundreds of volunteers, corporate sponsors who volunteer and bring their you know, bring their materials and everything a lot of big sponsors for this event.
01:57:03.000It's it's very it's it's very rewarding to see what people can do when they just care and they just want to do something to help somebody.
02:00:30.000He went to work on an album because he wanted to finish a piece of music he wrote in college and never finished.
02:00:38.000And he finished it and created an entire album of music.
02:00:41.000And then I found, I started going through his laptop and his iPad and I started to find all these pieces that he wrote and beautiful, beautiful music.
02:00:56.000And I brought together all his collaborators who worked on the first album with him.
02:01:03.000And we did a second album, Resurrection and Revival Part Two.
02:01:09.000And then I found more music in 2025, and we did Resurrection and Revival Part Three.
02:01:15.000We did Resurrection and Revival Part 3.
02:01:17.000And I told the story of that, you know, going through loss and grief.
02:01:21.000And the loss of a child is the hardest thing to lose a son and for my daughters to lose their brother like that.
02:01:34.000And so, but the way he fought with such grace and courage was inspiring.
02:02:04.000As you can imagine, it's a very personal book.
02:02:08.000It's not a book about cancer, fighting cancer, as much as it is about persevering through great challenge.
02:02:15.000And I, like I said, I've seen. hundreds, if not thousands of families go through a lot of different difficult, difficult things in their lives in military service.
02:02:29.000Wounded folks that are so banged up that they're never going to recover the way they want.
02:02:36.000And their family is just courageously persevering through each day, getting them through the next day and the next day after that.
02:02:45.000And they've inspired me so much over the years that I know that in some ways I was being prepared.
02:02:52.000for what we would face in 2018 when we found out our son had this orange-sized tumor on his tailbone that was really painful for him.
02:03:04.000And we didn't know why he was experiencing all this pain.
02:03:09.000He was a great drummer and he was drumming, but he was on tour after college and he was having all this pain just drumming.
02:03:18.000We finally sent him to my wife's spine surgeon.
02:04:40.000And he said, Dad, I want to give these vinyls to people.
02:04:43.000And if we ever sold any, I want the proceeds to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help our mission.
02:04:49.000He loved the foundation, loved the mission.
02:04:52.000And we continue to sell those vinyls at garysonisefoundation.org.
02:04:57.000And now the book comes out November 10th.
02:05:04.000two years writing this book and as you can imagine it was a hard one to write but a good healing one to write for me to be able to focus on it while at the same time I was putting the music together and producing the records so the past two years have been spent on that we're almost to the third anniversary of losing him
02:05:30.000it was tough but I want people to know it's not a book about cancer in as much as it's a purse about hope and courage.
02:05:41.000And Graceful Warrior comes from an interview I did with somebody who was asking me about him, and that's how I described him.
02:06:40.000He jumps out of the trench and the bombs are raining down and he's running through the bombs and he's getting knocked down by the bombs and he keeps getting up and he won't quit until he gets there.
02:06:52.000And I describe Mac as as that guy running through the bombs, getting knocked down and getting back up.
02:06:59.000He just kept getting back up as much as he could, even though he was paralyzed from the chest down.
02:07:03.000His spirit was soaring and it was beautiful to witness and I I feel so privileged as a.
02:07:22.000And November 10th, the day the book comes out, would have been Mac's 36th birthday.
02:07:28.000So I'm just talking about this book right now and trying to raise awareness.
02:07:38.000I wrote a story six weeks after he died.
02:07:42.000and posted it on the Gary Snees Foundation website.
02:07:45.000And I got so many wonderful messages from people, fathers, who may have lost a child themselves and have, like our service members, kept that stuff in.
02:07:58.000And I remember reading some of these messages from fathers who read the story and said, you know, reading this story is making me want to share what's going on inside me that I haven't talked about.
02:08:09.000I thought I would just push this grief away and keep it away and try to move on.
02:08:15.000And so I was encouraged by that and I think that's one of the reasons not only for writing it for Mac and writing it for the family but for any family out there who may be going through something tough, who wants maybe some encouragement, maybe some, you know, some just to find some strength and courage, you know, as they go through their own challenges in how we faced it and persevered through it.
02:08:48.000You can learn to manage it a little better as time goes on.
02:08:51.000And certainly, if you feel like sharing your story is going to help somebody else, and that's something I'm always talking to our veterans about, right?
02:09:05.000It's going to be healing to not only you, but to somebody else who might hear something you said and find some inspiration and courage in that.
02:09:14.000If sharing this story can do that for somebody, I know that Mac is going to be smiling about that.