Giving Back: A Q&A With Gary Sinise

Gary Sinise has portrayed soldiers, astronauts and President Harry Truman, but perhaps his most heroic role is as a real-life champion of military veterans and their families. 

The actor has long been an advocate for members of the United States’ armed forces. In the 1980s he supported Vietnam veterans’ groups by launching a Vets Night at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre; in the 1990s he partnered with the Disabled American Veterans organization; and in the 2000s he formed the Lt. Dan Band to perform for troops at home and overseas. The actor is now focused full-time on the Gary Sinise Foundation, which he launched in 2011 to expand his work on behalf of returned servicemen and servicewomen. 

City & State Albany Bureau Chief Jon Lentz spoke with Sinise about his foundation, the ways people can get involved in its work and how playing Lt. Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump was a turning point in his life. 

The following is an edited transcript. 

City & State: You have performed in several war-related movies, most famously as Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump. Did these roles contribute to your interest in serving military veterans?
Gary Sinise: After the movie came out 20 years ago, I was approached by the Disabled American Veterans organization, which invited me to their national convention. I was playing a wounded veteran, and I didn’t know anything about the DAV at that point. They are a 90-year-old advocacy organization with over 1.4 million wounded, injured and disabled veterans as members. They wanted to present me with kind of an acknowledgement for playing this wounded veteran in Forrest Gump. From that point, after I was very moved by the experience of attending this event with thousands of injured veterans, I stayed on working with the DAV and supporting them over the years.

C&S: In 2011 you started your own foundation, building on some of the work you were already doing. What are the Gary Sinise Foundation’s goals?

GS: You hit it there. I had been involved with multiple military charities for several years prior to starting the Gary Sinise Foundation. After Sept. 11 I volunteered to support the USO and visit our service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. I started entertaining them by forming a band to go out there, and then I started supporting a lot of different military charities that were raising money trying to support our active duty service members post-9/11. At a certain point, it was clear to me that the next step for me was to create my own military charity. I’m very involved with veterans and have been going back to the ’80s. With the success of CSI: NY and some of the movies and TV projects that I’ve been involved with, I wanted to turn that success into a giveback for our service members. I knew that creating my own foundation was a way to do that and expand on those efforts, allowing me to raise additional funds to put them into various programs and projects.

C&S: What are some of the foundation’s programs?

GS: The biggest program we have is the smart technology home building program we have for our injured service members. We’re involved in so many different things. I’ve gone around the country to raise money and awareness to build homes for badly injured service members. We do this under our R.I.S.E. program—Restoring Independence, Supporting Empowerment—and we want to empower these service members within their own homes so they can take care of themselves and be more independent of their caregivers. If you’re missing both arms and both legs, you’re going to have quite a few challenges going forward in life, and within your home you should have the most comfort and the most independence possible. So we try to put smart technology into these homes and design the homes around the individual wounded service member and his or her needs, so that they can better take care of themselves and not rely on everybody in their family or somebody else to do things for them. And it’s expensive to build houses and to put this technology into these houses. I’m doing this full-time now. My television show went off the air last year—I finished shooting in February of 2013—and I have devoted all my time to raising money and awareness for the foundation and raising spirits by going around the country playing concerts or doing hospital visits or trying to take care of these service members by trying to meet their needs.

C&S: There have been a lot of reports in the news lately about wait times at Veterans Affairs hospitals. Broadly, what should government do, or what can it do better, to help serve veterans?

GS: To me, we can never do enough for our veterans. I do think that the private sector and private citizens have a responsibility to take care of those who serve and protect and defend us. That’s just my personal feeling. Every one of us benefits from the freedoms we enjoy because we have people that are willing to sacrifice for those freedoms. If you pay attention to the way the world works, you understand that not everybody in the world enjoys freedom. So many countries around this world, their militaries are to keep them in check and to oppress them. We have a military that is there to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States, which is there to give us all as individuals more freedom to pursue our happiness. We are lucky that we have people willing to do the dangerous work to provide that.

So I think as a citizen who benefits from those who go out there and do that, personally, I feel that a way I can serve is by helping those who provide that freedom for me. And I try to inspire others to do that as well. I don’t think we can rely on government to do everything necessary to take care of those who serve. If we did not have the many, many nonprofits, support organizations and advocacy organizations for veterans out there, nongovernment organizations that are doing good work, I think we’d have a major catastrophe on our hands. Look at what we have now. With all those military nonprofits that are out there doing the work, we still have major problems with veterans falling through the cracks and not getting the services they need. That should never be tolerated by anybody. Hopefully with the recognition once again that the V.A. is not doing everything that they should be doing, and sometimes doing things that they shouldn’t with regards to helping our veterans, hopefully something will change. It’s an ongoing issue. 

C&S: You started the Lt. Dan Band, which plays for soldiers at home and abroad, about a decade ago. How many times have you been to Iraq or Afghanistan?

GS: I did four or five trips to Iraq, twice to Afghanistan. I’ve taken the band to Afghanistan once. I did personal trips on my own to the war zones, and then took the band to Afghanistan in 2009 for Thanksgiving. We’ve been to Guantanamo Bay, we’ve been to Alaska, we’ve been to Europe multiple times and Asia, Korea, Singapore, Diego Garcia, Okinawa, Japan—we’ve been all around the world for over 10 years now just trying to raise spirits and show appreciation.

C&S: You have won a number of awards in recognition of your work, including the Bob Hope Award for Excellence in Entertainment from the Medal of Honor Society; an honorary title of U.S. Navy chief petty officer; and the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest civilian honor for exemplary deeds in service of the nation. What do these distinctions mean to you?

GS: It’s very special to be acknowledged by the military and by these organizations for doing something that I enjoy and that I’m passionate about. When you receive an honorary membership in the Marine Corps, or Chief Petty Officer, or the Special Forces, or the Nightstalkers or any of these honorary things that I’ve been given, I don’t take any of that lightly, as I know that they don’t give these things away easily. It’s not something that the Army or the Navy or the Marine Corps does without careful consideration, so I take that very seriously and I’m humbled by it and honored to receive.

C&S: Have you worked with other celebrities who are active in supporting our troops and veterans?

GS: Joe Mantegna is the first one who comes to mind. I think he had five of his uncles serve in World War II. In fact, his last uncle, Willy, just passed away this past year. He was 92 years old, served with Patton’s army in the Battle of the Bulge. Joe is my co-host. He got me involved in the National Memorial Day Concert back in 2005. He had been, I think, doing it since 2002. Then I got involved. So he’s done it for, I think, 13 years. I just did my 10th National Memorial Day Concert in a row with him as co-host. I had been co-host with him for nine years. He’s someone who is an ambassador for my foundation. Somebody who I always know if I need help doing anything regarding military or veterans support, support for our wounded, whatever, I know I can always rely on Joe to be there if he can. He’s somebody who is very devoted to serving and giving back to the military.

C&S: Do you have any favorite movies or shows set in New York City?  

GS: I always enjoyed going to work in New York when I was shooting CSI: NY, and one of the movies I spent most of my time there shooting was Ransom back in the ’90s with Mel Gibson. The entire movie was shot in New York.

C&S: Any favorite movie set in New York City, other than the ones you were in?

GS: The Godfather, of course.

C&S: How can people get involved if they want to help out?

GS: The first thing I would ask them to do is give careful consideration to the Gary Sinise Foundation and go to garysinisefoundation.org and just look around the website at some of the things we’ve accomplished in three years. The seeds were planted for the foundation in 2010, but we launched in 2011. So our actual anniversary is June 30. We’re just entering our fourth year. We’ve accomplished a lot of great things. We’ve got a lot of great people we continue to work on behalf of. There’s many, many thousands of wounded out there that need our help. There’s thousands of Gold Star families—families that have lost a loved one in the war. We’re trying to serve their needs. My biggest fear is that with drawing down in Afghanistan, the warriors who have served for over 13 years in wars on both fronts, in Afghanistan and Iraq … will be forgotten and fall through the cracks because they’re off the front pages and we’re not focused on them so much anymore. But we’re going to be facing residual effects from these wars for many years, and they’re going to be struggling with a lot of issues. There’s mental health issues, there’s job issues, there’s injuries, there’s grief and a lot of things that this military, having been stressed and stretched very thin for over 13 years, that they’re going to be facing and challenges that they’re going to have. And thankfully there’s some good nonprofits out there trying to meet those needs and to sort of predict and look down the road as to where the new challenges are going to be. And my foundation is going to be there for them for a long time to come, and I encourage people to go to the website to check them out.

There’s a great quote on our website, that I always say: that we can never do enough for our veterans, but we’ve got to try to do as much as we can. Do a little more. And if you see somebody in uniform, just give them a pat on the back; it’ll mean a lot. You never know what they’ve been going through. A lot of them have lost a lot of friends over the years, they’ve seen a lot of terrible things, they’re going to have life challenges. And if they know people aren’t forgetting that they’ve been out there on the front lines doing their duty, that can mean a lot to them.