World Over - 2019-03-07 - Full Episode with Raymond Arroyo

he's a star defenseman for the New Orleans Saints but there's more to him than just football in an exclusive interview NFL linebacker Demario Davis discusses his career his faith and an issue near and dear to his heart and later award-winning actor philanthropist and author of the new memoir grateful American Gary Sinise talks about the book and serving our nation's military men and women and Chris Lewis the son of a Hollywood legend talks about his late father's legacy his own work on behalf of the disabled at the American wheelchair mission a special world over begins right now [Music] now from Washington DC Raymond Arroyo a warm welcome to all of you joining us in the United States and the world over forgive the voice it's signed a season Demario Davis Gary Sinise and Chris Lewis are all straight ahead if you'd like to comment on tonight's show send me a tweet I'm at Raymond Arroyo I'll be live tweeting throughout first here's an important story from the world over one we've been following for you for years now the body of Bishop Fulton J Sheen should be moved to a new shrine in Peoria Illinois that's the unanimous ruling of a new york appeals court on tuesday the court instructed the trustees of st. patrick's cathedral to permit the removal of Sheen's body in June diocesan officials in New York announced their decision to appeal a previous ruling by the Superior Court of New York in favor of Jones Sheen Cunningham that's Archbishop Sheen's niece she had petitioned the court to move her uncle's body to Peoria as a necessary part of his cause for canonization the tug of war over Shane's body dates back to 2002 when the Diocese of Peoria announced it would pursue his cause for canonization after the Archdiocese of New York declined to do so this is the third time that the New York Court system has ruled in Joan Sheen Cunningham's favor the Archdiocese of New York says it disagrees with the most recent ruling and is considering yet another appeal my first guest just wrapped up his first season as a linebacker for the NFC southern division champs the New Orleans Saints at six feet to 250 pounds he's a fearsome presence on the gridiron but there is much more to his story than what you see on the field I spoke to him recently at CPAC the Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington we talked about his career his faith and his most recent work on behalf of criminal justice reform here's my interview with jamario Davis now I have a confession to make before we start here at CPAC you know they don't let you wear they don't like you to wear t-shirts but if I were going to wear a t-shirt this is the one I was gonna wear I am a proud member of the Who Dat nation so they have Demario here just so you know Demario davis this last season and I was in the Superdome for a lot of these games he had the number one tackling record in the NFL more sacks more unbel it more than a hundred tackles an incredible player but he's so much more than that today we want to talk about really one of the passions of your life Demario which is criminal justice reform tell people a little bit about your story when you were in tenth grade something happened what happened well it was where I lived at my mom had me when she was 16 years old and so the environment that I grew up in was filled with drugs gangs clubs and I got involved in a lot of that and by the time I got to college and though I had a scholarship my first year in college I was arrested and went to jail for shoplifting and stealing groceries out of Walmart hmm and when I went to jail I realized that I had a ten thousand dollar bond and I didn't have ten thousand dollars to pay so I didn't know what was gonna happen but my coach paid paid my way and I was able to get out of jail because and I spend that time you know pretrial leading up to my court date in jail and then when I got to the league and started to spend time in the criminal justice reform space and realized that people are going to jail simply because they can't pay the bill and they're spending seven eight months in jail sometimes years in jail without even having a court date because the system is so backed up and I realized that I either could have been a statistic all right and my coaches not stepped in and paid that I couldn't pay the bill my mom couldn't pay it we didn't have that type of money but because I was an athlete I was able to not go to jail give people a sense you know people we all think well this doesn't affect me pretrial incarceration that couldn't affect me at all I stunned when I started doing research on this you have rapists you have child molesters you have murderers who are set free in the pre-trial period but people who shoplift engage in nonviolent crimes they are often incarcerated sometimes for a month awaiting trial or more what's the cost to us as a people financially in otherwise well you got to realize it's gonna fix the taxpayers tremendously I give you a story about a grandmother in San Antonio who stole a one hundred and five dollars worth of clothes to put clothes in the back of her grandkids was arrested and spent three months months in jail because she had a 150 thousand dollar bun that she could not pay you think about how that's gonna affect those children tremendously so for that crime because she couldn't pay it she spent three months in jail but you just talked about the serious crimes far more serious than that who people are able to get out of jail immediately because they have the funds to get out but that grandmother's spending that time cost taxpayers on average two or three thousand dollars in additional $3,000 for free trial last year we paid thirteen point six billion dollars in taxes for pretrial because there are 40% of our nation that's locked up the most of course incarcerated country in the world is pretrial and nine out of ten are those people who are in jail pretrial or because cash bill III was stunned when I I learned just this week because I do a lot of work as jazz Judd Mario does with illiteracy with children do you know what costs in California a hundred almost a hundred and thirty thousand dollars per inmate per year to incarcerate them for juveniles it jumps up to more than a hundred and eighty thousand dollars that comes out of our tax dollars annually that's just one person what is the answer here I know the American Conservative Union has been supporting something like these freedom you know bail organizations that would be community-based so that it let's back up a moment tell people about the financial incentives that are at play in the system today - actually jail people and the bail lobbyists tell us about that and the effect it has well you have to speak a little bit to both of what you said number one you got to think about the school to Prison Pipeline so they're going into the schools and looking at the fourth grade reading level and decided this how many prisons we want to be a based on this reading that the reading level the fourth graders so at the same time they could actually so for me to send my child to a private school when the best private school is gonna be about twenty thousand dollars a year so you're thinking about 180 thousand to hold somebody in prison versus twenty thousand to just build a school that was big enough to facilitate these children and enhance the reading level which you would think would be the right thing to do right now sounds too much it makes too much sense all right but when you talk about the bail system we go and fight these legislative bills in California in New York speaking of that there's a bill trying to get passed right now that the legislators are trying to figure out they want to do criminal justice reform around cash bail the people who are fighting against this are the bill's sponsor and the prosecutors the people who benefit from sending people to jail we haven't used up a friendly user-friendly system in New Orleans where the judge the prosecutor and the defender are all incentivized to send people to jail they all get paid based on how many people are in jail how does that how's that gonna affect the person they're standing before the judge nobody here is not has a reason not to send this person in jail actually they make more money by this person going to jail so that makes the defender less likely to defend them the judge less likely to sit declare innocent and a prosecutor to ask for the harshest punishment hmm and the taxpayers left with the bill exactly in perpetuity I mean the other problem here is the human capital lost I mean we have the innovation the intensity the creativity of individuals who aren't given a second chance and again we're talking about nonviolent offenders here what are you hearing well there seems to be a movement we saw President Trump move a criminal justice reform bill this past year something that has not been done administration after administration promised it Congress after Congress promised it there this first step which is what it's called move forward this past year your thoughts on what that means there seems to be a consensus on right and left that we have to do something about criminals I think I think the momentum is starting to move in the right direction I think there are great ideas to be able to replicate you look at DC this have no cash bail system the crime is definitely not higher here than anywhere else I mean you think the justice system is designed to make our community safer you look at Philadelphia IPO it was a print today in the USA Today talking about Larry crash near what he's doing as a prosecutor in Philadelphia 25 cases where he chose to do no cash bail and that's about 61% of the cases that came to Philadelphia and these were nonviolent offenses including drug offenses and prostitution and actually the violent crimes decreased by 5% in 2018 and the crime rate did not go up there was another study and this is this is fascinating that I came across just in my own research what happens to a non violent offender when you hold them pretrial okay when you incarcerate them for a day two days three days here's what they found two to three days incarceration their 39% more likely to be charged with another crime you keep them from 4 to 7 days again in a pretrial incarceration they're 50% more likely to be arrested a second time what does that tell you and what can be done about this that's that's a tremendous tragedy but I would even up that even more greatly the death the death rate goes up in jail and the more likely 4i pretrial people a third of the people that die in jail died within the first week also three quarters are the deaths that happen in our country in jail or pretrial or pretrial inmates it's almost like a death sentence to send somebody to jail for that long that extent and period of time without them being convicted of and we're literally talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars in pretrial incarceration we're not talking about not penalizing people who are guilty of heinous crimes that's not what we're talking about here but that pretrial period if you're dealing with an violent offender is it worth it in Cuyahoga County and in Ohio just Cuyahoga 42 million dollars they spent last year we've spent thirteen billion nationally incarcerated people pretrial what do you suggest what should be the legislative step what are you asking people to do to reform this bail and and pretrial incarceration area I think it looks different a little bit everywhere but ultimately we should be trying to move away from cash bill as a whole if we feel like somebody's gonna be a threat to society don't recommend bill so for those people who are we do have violent very violent offenders and people who are very scary who need to be locked up just simply ask that they don't have they don't have bill but for our nonviolent offenders you're pretty much making a profit based system you know it's all about do you have the money or do you not have the money that depends on if you're going to go if you're going to stay in jail or not also the bail system is designed to incentivize people to come back what we found out statistically is people who get out of jail on cash bail are 94 percent with no cash bail on 94 percent likely to return the court the other the other thing I think a lot of people miss because you know either they don't see it in their own family or they haven't heard the stories when you take someone and incarcerate them particularly if it's a head of a household the grant the sole grandmother who's raising children what impact does that have on the family I mean you yourself your father was a vet he was away serving in the Middle East and did that do you think that caused you to turn to mentors who were perhaps not the best mentors at the time and do you see a pattern of that all the time if you look in the communities where we raised a lot of the men not in the household for various reasons so the young boys I believe very much so that it takes a man to teach a man takes a boy how to be a man and when there around the boys are just gonna look to the older guys the older guys in society and the older guys in our society were drug dealers gangbangers and whatnot and so that's kind of who we we followed and tried to emulate and that's what it took sits down a bad path so we have to think about that we're may actually making our communities less safer when we take people and lock them up for that extent of time for nonviolent offenses because they're gonna be going from their family it's gonna it's gonna drastically push them into even more poverty because if my mom had I not had a coach my mom would have tried everything she could to get me out of jail on bail which would have forced her to go to a bail bond who would have made her put her house up maybe put a car up and just kind of locked her into some type of slave slave type system something that she couldn't pay back and when she couldn't pay back she was indebted to the bail bum who were sort of pushed into even more poverty now we've got to do something about this this bail system it's not but again the bail bond lobbyists are every time the reform moves forward they sort of seize in it's not good for us as a people it's not good for the for the community it's certainly not good for children I want to talk for a moment about your devoted dreamers foundation tell people a little bit about your in your personal life you when you come out of prison you're at the well you weren't there for long but you were you were caught up in the system you come out you're at Arkansas State you meet a pastor there who really changed your life tell me what happened there so I had the opportunity to be a disciple by our team chaplain and a little bit I thought when I was in jail for the three days that I was in there I just started to really wrestle and understand my life isn't going to direction I wanted to go and he just started spending time with me day by day asking questions about what I thought about life and he introduced me to the Bible and started to teach me about a relationship with Christ he welcomed into a relationship with Christ and it changed my life and the perspective that I had of life tremendously you know no no longer was my life about glorifying myself about living a life where the king and I watched him and I watched how he it was it was amazing my whole life I had never seen a two-parent household and be led under God and so I watched him and he raised his family and my it inspired me to do the same I've been married now seven years three amazing kids and they are raised in a household of Christ and tremendously so and I never got that second chance my life could look totally different but because I had that second chance and that's the importance that we didn't make sure we're doing with the rest of Sider society instead of throwing people away in LA and locking away the key need to be making sure we're trying our best and give them second chances because you never know what kind of positivity can come out of it and connect I love in your story connections mentorship we can't give up on anybody and one of the beautiful thing you know I live in New Orleans and if you have not seen this guy play I was in the Superdome this last season you all are going to the Super Bowl next year I'm just saying it now you heard it here first at CPAC okay at the end of every major play Demario does something that you all perhaps have not seen but watch closely next season because I think you're going to see a lot of it I mean this guy led in tackles last season he'll do it again show people what you do at the end of a major play there's a gesture you do get shorter I know that you tell a lot of times if you haven't seen it what I'll do is I throw a sack or a big play or interception what I used to do is just go and where I find a camera you'll see me do that and it's a it's a very simple pose but a lot of a lot of believers tell people what it means a lot of people have seen that you know and a lot of believers would know what that means but because they've seen that pose so much but it's simply Jesus on the cross and we're card has believed it to be imitators of Christ take up our cross daily and that's just a representation that every big play is not for me but it's about Gloria so that's why I do it to make sure that I'm glorifying the person who's responsible for saving my life in the Lord of my life okay we only have a fit beautiful I mean it's incredible witness you know in our final minutes I've got to ask you that I was in the dome during that Steelers game there was a fumble at the end near the end of the game this guy recovers it and shut the Steelers down then you won't go to the championship and there was that missed call that every member of the Who Dat nation is still thank you thank you my people we're all who that nation today the pain and that was tough that was a tough moment the NFL it seems is not going to reform those Mis plays or allow any replays or reviews is that a mistake I think a lot goes into it you always have to be able to see both sides of it because you know that was a very unfortunate play that happened to us because we do feel like it changed the trajectory of it and a trajectory of what could happen next but you do have to realize that a lot of games will be affected by the rule change which it could ultimately slow down the pace of the game I get it so you do have to understand their two perspectives I think as far as what happened to us it was a beautiful opportunity for us to take a negative situation and turn into a positive you look at drew Brees response to the entire city about hey we're not gonna be bitter about this we're not going to be resentful we're gonna actually turn this negative into a positive we're gonna use it as fuel and motivation to come back next year I think that's where we have to be as a society a lot of bad things happening around us but it's very easy to take a negative situation and turn into a positive situation life is 10% what happened to you and 90% how you respond to it I agree through Brees and this came they have such grace and I have to tell you um I always think I think I should write a book about this the country could learn so much about not only race relations but what it means to be civil in society if you spent a week in New Orleans now look we have crime we have our difficulties but nowhere do you see a community and I think it's partly because people you had nine separate races that came together married intermingle shared recipes our music all of that is a bit of the gumbo that makes our city when the Saints lost that championship game the following when they had the Super Bowl they had a boycott in the world so people took to the streets hundreds of thousands of people the whole city was out in black and gold they had spontaneous parades cookouts community black white Hispanic everybody coming together it was such a beautiful moment it was better than the Super Bowl and all that could only happen in New Orleans I want you to tell people very quickly before we run out of time tell me about your devoted dreamers foundation that you found it and the MBA that you were pursuing now as an NFL player why did you make that decision to pursue your masters in business I think one of my mentors just talked about the degrees of separation and differentiation and understanding that you know we all can be on a level playing field but if you just continue to climb up you can differentiate yourself away from the people around the people around you and so that just was another reason another goal to chase as long as you live I think you should never stop chasing goals never stop chasing new dreams and that's what you know kind of leads into a devoted dreamers foundation which I have and it's encouraging these kids who have these dreams that you can attain your dreams if you just believe and move towards them and so what we have is a mentorship program we have various programs throughout we have a seven week summer camp what we enhance key is spiritually mentally physically we have gospel conferences where we take 250 kids in and just share the gospel with them and listen to worship music all day and try to teach them the gospel and the opportunity to come to Christ like I like I'd when I leave here I'll be going back to my 707 Travel elite team where it's a mentorship program we focus on academia we focus on mentorship and dealing with peer pressure drugs alcohol sex and we also have a chaplain like I had to come in and speak to him to share the gospel on top of playing football and our main message to them are you're not football players your influences teaching them when they go in their classroom their influence or when they go to their friend's house and they go to parties their influencer so understanding that you can influence society in a positive way you can influence to society in a negative way and taking that stigma of just being an athlete person a person second away from hmm what what do you want I love that I love that you're giving back now you're taking the time to give back there are a lot of players who look there are a lot of players who do a lot of good like this they have foundations they reach out to the community there are there are others who could care less I love that you're the former what do you want people here to take away from before we leave that up from this criminal justice reform idea that you have and where you think the reform needs to take place what do you want them to go back to their communities I would just say this when it comes to people we remember people we don't remember people for what they do remember people for what they did for us and so you measure somebody to whom much is given much is required so with what you have you have talent you have treasures you have resources you have time how you use those to help those around you with how people are gonna remember you and so as a nation you have to think about nation in the same way what makes our nation great really is the idea of what we do for everyone not just what we do for ourselves so as we become this great nation or are this great nation we don't take all those resources to make sure it's extending to everybody we're not being great that's what makes us greatest people that's what makes us great as a nation you can find out more about Demario Davis's devoted dreamers foundation at devoted dreamers dot org go Saints who danced my next guest was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Lieutenant Dan in the 1994 blockbuster Forrest Gump he's an Emmy winner a family man musician and philanthropist working on behalf of our nation's fighting men and women he's also the author of a brand new memoir grateful American a journey from self to service please welcome back to the program Gary Sinise welcome back Gary great to see you as always thank and good to see you on our turf here why do you subtitle the book a journey from self to service well I didn't know what the book was gonna be called when I when I started to write it but as I started to pore through it you know these recurring themes started to come out gratitude appreciation and I realized that this memoir kind of tracked my life through the time where I was focused on the singular sort of acting thing that I was doing and building a theater company and you know the things that were around my small world and that it evolved into this broader mission story of service to others which I'm I'm very much involved in now because of my foundation the Gary Sinise foundation and everything so it really is that's that's exactly what the book is I am a grateful American and it is a journey following this this road from kind of a self focused to a broader service folk you open the book and you title the the prologue stunned and it's it's about a seminal event that happened about 25 years ago that confirmed you in what's become your life's mission your work tell me about that moment yeah I wanted to start the book with something then and then kind of go travel back so I started with a kind of a pivotal moment an important moment that sort of really stunned me in a way when I walked in to the Disabled American Veterans National Convention 25 years ago this summer and they had seen Forrest Gump and had just come out about a month before and they'd seen Lewton this is an organization that advocates for they might have 2 million members that are all wounded veterans and they invited me to their National Convention I walked in and I was so emotional to receive their acknowledgement they wanted to acknowledge me for playing a disabled veteran and what they consider to be a positive way and you know 2000 wounded veterans cheering you on that that was very emotional I never forgot it you you you're talking to book also about your grandfather's service you take us way back in the book and you had family who were veterans your wife's family as well tell me a sense of hub that laid the groundwork for this concern and heart you have for military men and women and their families well it's funny when I was a kid my and my dad was in the Navy and the early 50s and I was I was born in 55 he got out of the Navy in 55 I was born I was conceived here at Anacostia on the naval base there and that's where my dad was stationed he was working in the film lab as a naval a photo mate is what they called him and that's where he learned the film business he moved my mom went back she left she was pregnant she went back to Chicago said I'm gonna have the baby there he got it on the Navy about a week after I was born um and then he went into the film business in Chicago started working in the film business his dad had served in World War one and his two older brothers served in World War two so I've got this family on my side of the family of veterans but I never really talked to them too much about their service when I was a young kid it was really when I met my wife and she introduced me to her brothers who had served in Vietnam in the US Army her sister was in the army your sister married a Vietnam veteran who was in the army 22 years combat medic in Vietnam they were the ones that sort of you know started to talk to me about military service and what it was like to be a Vietnam veteran serve in the jungles and then come home to a nation that didn't treat them very well and they had to kind of recline into the shadows a bit I felt very badly for our Vietnam veterans and so in the early 80s I just started to do some things in Chicago to support them in different ways and that sort of planted the seeds a little bit for what would happen in the 90s when I had the opportunity to audition for Forrest Gump and then play a Vietnam veteran I very much wanted to do that because of the military veterans in my own family and that led me to start working with our wounded and and it's all it all turned there was a turning point that there's a chapter in the book called turning point right which is the September 11th and hmm that was a real turning point for me and I started moving into into the service work that I haven't stopped mmm no it really it arrested people who were not there at the time don't remember what that moment did to the entire country I mean it was a shock to the whole system of the country to those who were dealing at first responders in their family or were in any way involved with the the victims of 9/11 or the New York scene it became very real the the threat the danger and how fragile the freedom we took for granted was I'm right about that in the book the fear that I had after that that event I mean it was terrifying yeah you know to watch those buildings come down once people fall from those buildings watch you know what was happening the Pentagon and in Shanksville and all the and then remember shortly after that all of a sudden anthrax is flying through the mail and everything I mean it was crazy it was a very paranoid time everybody was on edge and I was on edge and my heart was broken and I just I just wanted to do something and I remember I think I told you this one time Friday after the Tuesday of September 11th was a National Day of Prayer George Bush said everybody we need to do something together as a country I want Friday to be a National Day of Prayer the churches were packed across the country I went to our little church little Catholic Church and there was no room to sit I mean I was standing against the wall with my family ever there every space was filled and I remember coming out of that feeling that you know I mean was it was comforting but I I needed to do something beyond that and I heard this calling this thing this message that came to me about service and the healing power of service work and that made a lot of sense to me so I started raising my hand you know for the USO and you know what can I do for your military charity can I come and raise money for you can I draw some attention to you do some PSAs whatever it is play concerts for the troops and and it just started to go like this and there's a period in in that service history where you look at it and it's like I was gone every weekend doing song and I was shooting a television show at the same time yeah it was a crazy period but I really I was getting so much out of making an impact by letting people know that I cared about them and I appreciated them and and the war got worse remember there was a time where Walter Reed was just filled to the gills with wounded and they didn't know where to put him there were so many and during that period of time I was going to the hospitals all the time meeting a lot of the families of our wounded meeting our wounded service members trying to come up with some ideas in ways to help them and so I started raising money I started getting into home building where we would build especially adapted homes for edible and it all manifested itself into the creation of a Gary Sinise Foundation which is toward the end of the book you see the service journey into this full-time nonprofit that has devoted to serve and honor the needs of our military 2011 and first responders yeah and you know we're getting great things done at the Meurice in each fight no I've seen it up close do I want to talk about it in a moment I want you got you get into your career as well and I'm gonna back up a little bit in high school and this I didn't know in high school you were not exactly the straight arrow that people think you are today Gary Sinise I mean you were you were doing pod you were selling it a little scrape with the law after you signed on to be an in West Side Story what happened there where did this acting bug come from during that period well I had a I had a lot of trouble as a kid I I never learned properly I don't think how to read and write I've gotten better over the years yeah high school teacher is amazed that's incredible you could put words together see that they make sense and when she first met me I got you know I was just bumbling around and and you know I was having trouble with my I tell this story in the book we're where we moved from town to town a little bit right in those in those years where you're you know you're developing a lot of friends and you're making friends and then all of a sudden we uprooted and moved and I had had to you know I was had to make new friends and that was it that was a struggle I played in rock bands I got into trouble with a lot of things that I write about a little bit in the book because it you know I do hope that you know somebody who might be going through a similar thing can see that there is light at the end of the tunnel if you you can turn yourself around and I was lucky I'm you know in in some ways I don't know I happen to be standing in a hallway and this drama teacher walked down the hall when I was a sophomore in high school and she told me to come an audition for West Side Story because I looked like a gang member she thought I'd be good in the show and so I did I went and auditioned and I got in the show and all of a sudden I discovered here's this aimless kid who's really really troubled having a lot of trouble adjusting and all of a sudden I found this community of kids that I loved and I just loved doing the play and I wanted that's all I wanted to do so I I just auditioned for every play I could after that and it you know as soon as I got out of high school I started a theater I wanted to keep doing it not any theater you start the Steppenwolf Theatre Company which is now this iconic institution in in Chicago but in kids yeah in the beginning it's you and law mid-calf and John Malkovich yeah your pals and you're doing these shows together what was it like in those early years I mean you all were all learning at the same time I imagine yeah my in West Side Story and your wife Maura who's also he was an early member yeah 1976 and West Side Story the guy who was playing Tony the lead you know I was one of the chorus guys I was a shark epic yeah and the guy who was playing the lead was Jeff Perry Oh and Jeff and I became best best friends and he was very different than me he was guy who carried a million books around and he had classes read check off and Stanislavski and I thought I didn't know what any of that was and I was just a rock and roll kid you know but we really connected and we hit it off and after high school I just wanted to keep doing plays so I started this company with some of the high school kids and Jeff had gone off to college to Illinois State University and I told him about this and so for his summer break he came up to do a play with this little community company company a play club Bice Tom Stoppard called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and he had made very good friends with another guy at at ISU named Terry Kenny it was another great actor so he said I'll bring Terry with me and he'll be in it too so Terry came up and the three of us really bonded during that that experience and we said you know when you guys get out of college we're gonna pick this up again and do something so a couple years later they get out of college and we find a space in the basement of a closed-down Catholic school they went to the priest and I said can can we have your basement put on some play and he said sure and you know it was closed down they weren't doing anything with us he he he said he'd give it to us for a dollar a year just to write off and so we built an 88 seat theater in this basement of a Catholic school in Highland Park Illinois and we recruited six more people and Laurie Metcalf Moira Harris John Malkovich Allen Wilder h-he vacas and nancy evans and we became the original nine members of Steppenwolf and from there it just it just kept growing and growing and growing then we moved into the city of Chicago and built our own building and now we're about to break ground on another building and you know it's 45 years old now that that theater unbelievable did you ever expect Lieutenant Dan to do what it's done and why has it resonated in the way it has all these years later I mean generations now we're talking about multiple generations now that see you as Lieutenant Dan and that gives you a certain credibility in addition to your work in the in the veteran community you know um you know I don't know I mean can you it's you can think of a few movies that are constantly you see them everywhere they're always on television it's a wonderful life yeah on every year right a new general Forrest Gump seems like it's on television all the time somebody is always texting me hey I'm watching Gump on TV right now and it seems like it's never quite left the consciousness in some way so new generations of kids are seeing Forrest Gump I'll go and play for these concerts and these concerts on military bases there'll be 5,000 people out there they're all screaming Lieutenant Dan at me and I'll ask them you know how many people here have seen Forrest Gump and everybody cheers and then uh they don't say is there anybody over you know over ten who hasn't seen that movie and you know it's very quiet Wow people do I don't know if they're just embarrassment what but they it seems like everybody's seen the film and so it's it's always there and when I started going out for the troops I hadn't I hadn't had CSI New York yet mm-hmm so I wasn't on television every week and I've done I had done some movies but I was still kind of that the guy you know guy who played this guy and the guy who played that got people who didn't know my name but they knew Lieutenant definied and they recognize me from that that's why I named my band after the character yeah I figured well if they don't know my name they'll know no lieutenant Danner they'll figure it out and they have tell me when I covered the snowball Express this past Christmas it blew me away I have to tell you it's not at all what I expected to see I thought we'd have a bunch of kids having a good time at Disneyworld but it really is it's a new music moment you try to explain it but you have to experience it and see it and what what goes through your mind when you see these people discovering each other in their shared pain and in the pain that they alone understand these families of veterans who've lost their lives and what do you say to them well it's humbling you know I mean in and it's moving and I just embrace them and let them know that I love them and that I care about them and that they're not alone that's that's the thing about this particular event bring all the kids together and the families these are kids that live all over the country in little towns or wherever it is they might be the only military family in that town and they lost their mom or their dad in military service and that child is going through something that none of the other kids are growing right well when they come together with this event that we do every year for these children and they meet all these are over a thousand other kids that have all gone through this grieving of losing you know a mom or a dad in military service they've they really feel like they're in a community like they're in a family like they're not alone and they make lasting friendships I mean these kids give each other their numbers and then they go off to the little towns and they stay in touch with each other and they meet up the following year oh it's a network of friends that are made I'm going to show people this little clip of video that your foundation released this week it went viral and it is people thanking you being grateful for your work watch this I just wanna thank you for everything that you do and your foundation helped me and my family recover from the devastating Cubs fire not only me and my family but also hundreds of other firefighters give me a reaction to that when you saw all those people thank you well first it was a shock because I was surprised by it my team kind of pulled a fast one on me and and they they were sneaking around behind my back getting everybody to send in videos and they were putting it all together and they they they had it perfectly planned for to show it to me on the day that my book launched hmm and so we're on this book tour and you know and we're in the hotel room we're about to leave to go do some more interviews and they you know I'm like in a hurry they made me sit down need to watch this yeah I'm like what's going on what's going on so they made me watch it and the first first one up is Jay Leno and he starts talking to Gary hey Gary and then then Ron Howard comes on and then another and it keeps going on and they're first responders there and there are military folks from around the country and overseas and there are gold star children and some of our wounded that we've done houses for yeah and I I'm thinking about it and I get choked up just just think about it because it was very very touching and very moving and overwhelming I mean yeah I know it was a beautiful just to see that people did that for me I mean I'm a grateful American there yeah well and people are grateful for you I mean the response I saw on social media was unbelievable I got to ask you this before I let you go cuz you talked about it in the book it seems as if and you told me moments ago this is really a calling from God for you and that's how you see it this work you're doing I feel called to service for sure and and there were there were these key moments along them you know and I can you know I talked about that a little in in the book that that moment where our priest on the Friday after September 11th attacks everybody is just in so much pain you know how people are just crying through everyday you know recalling the images that we all saw on television the things that are happening everybody was fearful and I remember the priest getting up and the first thing he said was this this was a tough week and he was right on the money you know everybody it was a tough week for every hell it's a tough week for me and and and and it continued to be tough mm-hmm and I continue to be in pain and something I got out of that homily that day was that service is a great healer serving others is a great healer and we should all pull together to do something positive for somebody else to help them through this terrible time and having veterans in my family and having been involved with the DAV the disabled veterans and everything and and remembering what it was like for our Vietnam veterans to go off to war and then come back and not have services provided for them not have the country embrace them and welcome them home they got it they didn't even get a welcome home and then seeing our deploying troops go to Afghanistan and Iraq and watching our nations start to divide itself in whether they supported the war or not I felt terrible for our deploying servicemembers and I knew that was where my calling was going to be and I was going to be called to do this service work to help them through this difficult time of deploying to the war zone in reaction to September 11 and once I started the healing began and I could see the impact I was making and I just I wanted to embrace every every family member every person that was deploying every first responder that I could what's on the horizon for the foundation now what's the next thing the foundation is growing we're expanding our impact and our reach I brought in some new team members that are helping lead the way I mean I'm you know I put my acting career on hold the last thing I did was a December of 2016 so it's over two years that I've just poured myself into this work and I think probably three I've only worked three and a half out of the last eight years and that the the rest of the time has been focused on this mission of building this foundation in hopes that we could create a lasting reliable resource for the American people who want to support our defenders if you go to Gary Sinise foundation org you can learn a ton of things about the great programs were where we have at the foundation and the people that were impacting my next guest grew up among Hollywood royalty the son of the late comic legend my pal Jerry Lewis he had a front row seat to a Golden Age of entertainment i sat down with him recently to talk about his late father's legacy and his own vocation of bringing the gift of mobility to the disabled by founding the American wheelchair mission here's my exclusive interview with Chris Lewis Chris you really follow in your father's footsteps in a couple of ways and I want to highlight the the the two that I know of first of all you what's become a big part of your life's work the American wheelchair mission this really came from working with your dad all those years on the MDA telethon absolutely tell us about it well I started working on the MDA telethon when I was 14 years old and a lot of people have said you know don't you want to do what your dad did and I said well I really kind of did just not the silly stuff the stuff that really meant something uh stuff that touched me and touched my parents and our family and just felt very natural and where did this where did the first impulse for this notion of distributing wheelchairs to impart to the world and country that people did happen how many people black wheelchairs you think everybody wants a wheelchair can get one the closest estimate we can come up with is about a hundred million people in the world need a wheelchair cannot afford one and no other type of mobility device would help them Wow and you felt called to this particular we're not yeah we weren't the only people doing it but it's been done for quite a few years on a smaller basis but since 2000 there have been some very inspired people that have got involved the LDS Church was one of the first to get involved and of course we work with the Knights of Columbus in the equestrian order and all sorts of organizations Caritas has been doing it for years and they're our distribution partner in many countries so it just it's something that just rang true with me when I heard about it and got involved in it and I'm doing it 19 years and working with people with special needs was really second nature after what you'd spent so much of your childhood and adulthood doing absolutely because that all inspires prayers being thankful for my kids and their health and prayer inspires thought inspires action and turns into answering prayers I want to talk about a few other things you are here in the DC area because you just delivered the second shipment this is like Smokey and the Bandit part two you know you have to go first cross scar now the second pass is um what did you bring to the Library of Congress you have been bringing bits of your father's legacy my dad donated his entire film and television archive to the library Congress back in 2015 so the first shipment was most of the film much of the tape the second one was the second half of all the tape production papers scrapbooks photographs proof sheets things that pertain to the creation of these yeah not just his films but also all the audio tapes of his live performances and interviews and television and so yeah it's just it's so deep it's going to take years for them to wow you recently released a box set of the ten his ten favorite films what were they and why they were basically the films that he created himself the most that were closest to him the ones he directed the bellboy his first directorial product from the errand-boy cinderfella and the Nutty Professor and family jewels and through Paramount Pictures who we've had a wonderful relationship with for 50 years plus they said we there's still a segment of people who want to own the Jerry Lewis DVDs and Walmart jumped on it and they sold more of those they did any of the other product that they had out in that quarter Wow and so they reached it and we're doing it and hoping to spread it more over so what do you attribute that what do you think that what is that audience need that they're answering there and do you think he still speaks too well it's it's fun it's funny it's available to any audience you don't have to worry about what's being said what's being seen and it doesn't matter what language you speak because this crazy guy gets should laugh no matter what he's saying or doing or falling downward I was stunned 3,000 canisters you conveyed film canisters to the Library of Congress it's a massive collection what what did you what shocked you that you found among these papers these films that you didn't realize were there or you didn't think you'd find constantly being shocked actually yes the the depth of what my dad kept anything that had to do with the creative process he kept he had kinescopes made of all of his performances starting back in the 1940s the library was actually saying we don't have any of these shows they didn't exist they were only broadcast live but he would call the American kinescope company and say I want a copy for myself so all of the Johnny Carson shows that he hosted for weeks at a time we had kinescopes all 28 of the Martin Lewis Colgate Comedy hours from 1950 to 55 he had the only copies so it's a treasure trove for the library well are you planning any further releases and explain to the audience how this works you your father donated all of his films to the Library of Congress what about the copyright do you retain that yes so the family still retains that yes and we did some screenings of some of his films up at MoMA at the Museum of Modern Art unknown Gerry tell us about that yeah some of the some of the films that he made himself he was behind the camera a lot he would have his friends over the Dean Martin Tony Curtis Janet Lee they would just be playing around it kind of at home productions with some of the biggest stars in the sync sound and we're in the process of restoring them now basically because they were only one copy 16 millimeter copies that he showed through his projector 20 30 40 times so now we've got the one only and we're in the process of doing that with the library Congress restoring them I saw New York Times piece recently about really his his unreleased film that has arrested so much attention globally they've done documentaries on it at the BBC this New York Times piece I saw a variety piece last year and it's about the day the clown cried yes his film he shot never released I asked him about it when we spoke I want you to watch this the day the clown crime no no you have that one you kept that back we're not gonna talk about the exam you can everybody in there dog I've talked about it I personally think I would love to see it because of your artistry but there's such expectations now built about what's in that canister what was it you said about what I brought to it the artistry that you have shown throughout you what's the problem there was no artistry no no and the work was bad so you didn't want people to see the work wasn't even as far as I'm concerned my critique was it wasn't even something you should show to the public that's how bad it turned out you say that this was very close to his heart this film tell me about it and are there are there more is there a complete cut of this film not to my knowledge I don't believe there is a complete cut we saw a work print back in the early 70s I think that's all there was because it was a co-production between a French Swedish and American company and the producer from America ended up not paying the writer my dad never had the rights to rewrite it and it just fell apart so the negative exists in probably three different countries and nobody could finish it even if they wanted to really because I know there are some interested that they rehabilitated an old unfinished Orson Welles movie Netflix released it would you be interested in seeing something like that happen with the day the clown cried well I think since you can talk about history I think going back and looking at it from a historical standpoint would be very interesting that I would think would be good but since there's no way to get your hands on the actual negative it was tied up in so much litigation so many people lost money when the New York Times or the LA Times articles came out people were calling my dad's office threatening them if you do anything release anything we'll see you in a second it's still that's tied up in a lot of different rights and and and but the the Library of Congress claims they have in their possession now which you gave them back stage images of from Associated so kind of a behind the scenes yes of shooting the film staging the film maybe that would make a documentary or something I actually it would make a very good documentary if the person had handed the camera to knew how to use it all over the place it's a mess several 2,000 foot reels of color reversal film and you see his shoes more than you see Wow what's happening behind the camera when I was with your dad at the house in Vegas he showed me clips of his live stage act from the 60s in Paris - and I saw him later in Vegas as a kid with Sammy Davis on stage which I knew you were involved in at the time any any thought of releasing those live performances or a collection of those yes as a matter of fact there are some that have been available in the past HBO did one on Jerry and Sammy we have several of the live performances that were released years ago back on videotape and we have the raw footage from Australian performances that he did in 99 before he got sick Wow so that that's kind of like untouched gems that we can go back and put something together let's talk about your work now I am a Janu heart well I know there is with the absence of your dad you were so close to him and and as he told me when I asked him what what's your legacy he said that guy right there and he pointed to you and you are carrying that legacy forward do you feel a sense of is it a burden is it a is it a weight that you feel you have to carry that no it's not not a burden or weight at all it's it's an honor a pleasure my dad was many things but the the level of creativity that he attached to doing things right he always found a way to do it right and he taught me that and so the legacy that I'm keeping alive is we're helping people who can't help themselves we're answering people's prayers he was the one who said we're doing God's work on earth that's the first time I heard is when he said it about MDA yeah work at MDA and the telephone and that it's amazing which you can accomplish if it doesn't matter who gets the credit that was another one of his favorite sayings what's next were the American wheelchair mission what would you like to see happen next well we have been delivering a lot of wheelchairs into the Christian families in the Middle East working with Caritas organizations in Jerusalem Lebanon Jordan it's very frustrating it's hard it's hard to help these people we're doing a lot in Vietnam Caritas Vietnam I think is one of our best distribution partners in the world but the need is enormous it's just just enormous but the Knights of Columbus have been there for us helping the American veterans yeah who don't qualify for VA benefits or need an additional wheelchair the Knights are there to supply them with it and it's wonderful there's there's more of that that we can do we'd like to get more people involved did you know they're retired priests and nuns who don't have wheelchairs No Wow I had that discussion with cardinal Dolan New York April of last year and we have a program going on with the Knights in New York now where they're working to get wheelchairs to any priest nun that needs them Wow yeah Chris Lewis thank you for being here thank you for all you do and and for the joy that you continue to spread there your father's work and the good work you're doing with the wheelchair of mission it's my pleasure incredible thank you you can find out about Chris Lewis and his work at the American wheelchair mission at am wheelchair dot org that is all the time we have for now until next week the show continues on Facebook and Twitter like me on Facebook you can follow me on Twitter go ahead the links are at Raymond Arroyo com don't forget I am giving away a couple of copies actually five copies of the will wilder three the amulet of power audiobook all you have to do is send me a picture of you or your family reading the book you can send it to Raymond at Raymond Arroyo comm or hit me up on Twitter or Instagram and remember you can get will Wilder 3 at bookstores everywhere including the EWTN religious catalogue be sure to join us next week we'll be scouting the world over for all that is seen and unseen on behalf of the staff and crew of EWTN news thank you for watching I'm Raymond Arroyo from Washington DC I'm now going to go soak my croaky voice bye now [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 9,149

Rating: 4.7938147 out of 5

Keywords: ytsync-en, wot06048, wot

Id: cEHs8DcMHzw

Length: 59min 30sec (3570 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019