A Conversation with Grateful American, Gary Sinise

hello DAV this is Dan Clair in these days of the pandemic it's important for veterans to know that you are not alone there are people out there rooting for you and we have a really good friend joining us today a star both in our community in terms of advocacy for veterans and in terms of of really being a star a great movie film television all over the place star Gary Sinise Gary thank you so much for joining us today hey thank you dan good to be with you looking okay here yeah looking good Gary yeah you you just finished your book over the last year grateful American we're all so grateful for you and thank you so much for all you do for us do you how things been going since the book came out well thanks thanks for having me and hello to all my DAV pals out there I'm of the DAV and it's been a privilege to be a part of it all these years it was great when we when we got to do some book signings at the last convention and you know I got to meet so many people close before my concert and everything like that so I hope everybody who got the book I hope you liked the book the books done very well I understand from the publisher and from my agent that a good successful launch of a book can be anywhere around 25,000 copies sold and you know and the book has done over 160,000 copies so I think we did real really well if you haven't had a chance to get the book it is also available on audio where I did the audio version and read my own book and and people can give it a listen than that you know fall asleep to me every night right around the time the Forrest Gump came out you're in a great miniseries called the stand based on the Stephen King book did you ever think that it might be coming partially true ah gosh we when we made the stand I mean I'm sure you know it was a long time ago we shot it in 1993 so it was it was just a just a year before I was introduced in the DAV actually let me shot that that the stand actually came out about on television about two months before Forrest Gump came out in the theaters I'm sure back then we discussed the the potential of a virus spreading across the planet and what it would do i mean there's also the stephen king aspects of the stand which is good and evil and darkness and kind of all them all the sort of surreal things that happen within it but the reality is that there's always the patient zero and when you look at what happens in the stand which is it's a virus that gets out in the United States from a lab and somebody and people start getting sick in the lab and one of the workers there decides to get get out and he gets in his car and starts driving across the country to get away from and of course he's infected and everywhere he goes he he infects people along the way and then it spreads across the entire planet well there's he's patient zero in the stand but you can see how travel and he's traveling by car in the span travel for the corona virus obviously was people getting on airplanes and traveling all around and not even knowing they had the virus well that was the case with the guy on the stand of course until he got very very sick and then he meets me at the certain point it's pretty interesting I thought about going back to watch the stand you know but I think we're living it right now so I I didn't really have any you know and any big desire to sit down and watch a miniseries about a play you know while we're going through a pretty serious virus that is spread across the planet and who would have thought you know but it's it's always been possible these types of things have happened in the history of the world before we have some very very good scientists and very good people out there that are trying to solve the problem I think we will get it solved and you know life will be maybe a bit different afterwards quite a bit different afterwards for a lot of people have been struggling with their businesses shutting down and and not knowing where to turn but you know when you when you look and look at things you know the world and the planet has survived some pretty pretty intense challenges through our course of human history none none more troublesome than you know 85 million people 90 million people being lost you know 75 years ago in world war ii when the entire planet was infected with war and entire cities were turned to rubble and you know millions and millions of people were were killed lost their lives and and millions more were disabled but the planet came back from that our country came back from that roaring back and I think we will get this under control and and come roaring back that's interesting just the other day I saw your your 75th celebration VE Day a great job on that this is affected of course all the work that your charity does and all the work that we do together just next week we were scheduled to have a Boulder crest event that it's just not going to happen and that leaves a lot of veterans kind of left in the lurch you have any words of encouragement for people just so folks know about what we do with with Boulder crest and I'll give a little little bit of the history on it I met Ken who started Boulder Crest Ken fault back in around 2014 or so and he was a former EOD Navy guy who did very very well in business and had a courage out in bloom on Virginia and he decided to make a retreat for our servicemembers he built all these cabins and I went you know after I met him I said I'm gonna come and see what you're doing and I went there while they were building it hadn't opened yet and in the back of my mind I thought that for the purposes of Gary Sinise foundation in future doing something in partnership with Boulder crest with regards to our our wounded service members and service members struggling with post-traumatic stress this would be a great place to do it and then thinking that I was in Florida at one point I drove over to Apopka and sat down with Jim seriously and I said Jim what would you think about you know teaming up some of our our veterans through the DAV who have been living with their injuries for many many years who have become successful in business gone on done well found a way around their challenges physically and and moved on with life and who have successfully lived with these issues for 40 or 50 years what would you think about pairing up some of those folks with some of our younger veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan struggling with similar things and Jim thought it was a good idea proposed it's a DAV and now the the three entities Gary Sinise Foundation Boulder Creston DAV got together we started doing retreats at Boulder Crest so these are retreats that now Boulder Crest has opened another retreat outside of Tucson so we have a couple of spaces and now we're expanding it around the country in different ways so it really is a thing that requires travel you know we bring our veterans together and we send them to to the retreat for six or seven days and they go through very serious program very beneficial program as so many I've heard from so many the veterans that have come out of there spending time with our DAV members and spending time with a boulder crest staff and just learning a lot going through a lot of healing through that process that's been very beneficial and now of course we can't send them to the retreats because of what's going on with Corona box but again I think we will come out on the other end at some point and we will get back to business and we will look forward to not only the boulder crest retreats but conventions and events and all the different types of things that we do together to make people's lives better and to be able to let them know how much they're appreciated and how we want them to be okay we want them to move on with life we want them to know there's a grateful America out there that supports them and that that's that's what we do at the Gary Sinise foundation DAV has been all over that for 90 plus years so it's been very and that's what ken is doing it Boulder crest so very good partnership there and I look forward to that picking up again it looks like that might be expanding with Travis Mills getting involved he's quite quite a hero well Travis unknown Travis says he was at Walter Reed back in 2012 and and Travis is at a quadruple amputee amputee lost both his legs both his arms in Afghanistan I heard about Travis because we had begun building homes for some of the quadruple amputees and triple amputees way back when and so on a trip to Walter Reed I look for them contacted him we became friends we ended up building a house for Travis and his family up in Maine he became an ambassador for my foundation the Gary Sinise foundation then you you gave me a call recently asking if I could put you in touch with Travis he's an inspirational guy a wonderful guy and he's taken his circumstance much much like you know many of our inspirational veterans who take their challenges and turn it spin it into gold and he he has done that he's not let his amputations and losing his arms and legs slow him down one bit you created Travis Mills foundation he's got a retreat up in Maine where he's been bringing our wounded their healing and their families I think it'll be a great match for him to do some speaking with the DAV and to participate in some of the DAV work I'm grateful that the DAV is going to support Travis and some of the work that he's doing he's a great guy then a great ambassador for the Gary Sinise foundation great friend really inspirational value hey Gary Gary can you tell me what else you have going on with your charity right now I would like everybody to know that in spite of the coronavirus and what's going on with co19 and all that there's a couple of things that i want you to know about you can go to the Gary Sinise foundation website and see what we're doing with a campaign that we launched right after things started shutting down we wanted to play a role and supporting the people that were fighting this fight so the Gary Sinise foundation we launched the Cooke emergency Cove in nineteen combat service initiative we're taking in donations and we're passing them on all across the country in various ways to help people who are fighting this fight so check out the Gary Sinise foundation there and in spite of this virus what we normally do on Memorial weekend in front of the Capitol I'm the co-host of the National Memorial Day concert on PBS Sunday night before Memorial Day we can't do it live this year but we are doing a show and we're gonna put together a wonderful show for you I actually shot a few things with my co-host Joe Montana so tune in May 24th Sunday May 24th 8:00 this Eastern 7 central on PBS to watch the National Memorial Day concert I encourage you to do that of course we'll be highlighting some great stories from the past that we've had on past shows and we're going to be celebrating than first responders and health care workers that are out there fighting his fight for us to an inmate 24 all right thank you Gary thank you so much for your time my pleasure thank you take care dad

Channel: Disabled American Veterans

Views: 4,039

Rating: 4.9642859 out of 5

Keywords: Disabled American Veterans, DAV, veterans, service, veteran service organization, charity, non-profit organization, wounded, heroes, Gary Sinise, Gary Sinise Foundation

Id: oVSH1uO_vPs

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020