On Monday we pause to honor the selfless men and women who fight to keep the United States safe, but Gary Sinise doesn’t just honor the U.S. Armed Forces on Veterans Day, he’s been celebrating them for decades. 25 years ago the actor played the iconic role of Lt. Dan Taylor — a platoon leader who loses his legs in the Vietnam War and struggles with alcoholism and mental illness in the Oscar- winning film Forrest Gump. Since then the actor has dedicated his life to serving U.S. military veterans and their families.

By: Heather Newgen | Twitter: @hnvoluntourist

In an exclusive sit down interview with The Voluntourist, Gary Sinise talks about his passion for helping veterans, his Lt. Dan Band and how Forrest Gump was not only a career changer, but sparked his commitment to supporting the Armed Forces.

WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 27: Co-host Gary Sinise and Silver Star recipient Leigh Ann Hester pose for photo during the finale of the 2018 National Memorial Day Concert at U.S. Capitol, West Lawn on May 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capital Concerts)

The Voluntourist: You’ve hosted the National Memorial Day Concert  for thirteen years now. Why is the event important for you to be a part of?

Gary Sinise: 2005 was my first year. I was doing USO tours and I had been on several handshake tours, that is when I just go out and shake hands, take pictures, and visit with the troops. Then I started taking the band and we’ve done some tours to Asia and around the States. I was doing quite a bit and Joe Mantegna, my buddy, knew about that and he was involved with the concert a few years before that. He invited me to come do a segment on the USO. They were planning to highlight the USO in one of their segments and so he said “come and play and you will be a part of that segment”. We brought the band here and the band was very early. We started playing our first things in 2003, but we really ramped it up in 2004. Next thing you know, we are overseas and on a USO tour to Europe. It was our first tour to Germany, Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands. Then we had arranged to come straight here to be a part of the National Memorial Day Concert. It’s a huge crowd and it’s televised and we were very early in our evolution there. Being up on stage with all those people and everything was really something special. They also asked me, as long as I was coming, to narrate some segments throughout the show. So, I played and then I went on and I narrated things and got off and talked and was a part of the show as an actor. The following year, Joe and Jerry Colbert, who were producing, asked me to come back and co-host.

WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 29: Actors and co-hosts Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna onstage at the 27th National Memorial Day Concert on May 29, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capitol Concerts)

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The Voluntourist: You and Joe go way back. You’ve been friends since Chicago Theatre days, right?

Gary Sinise: We were acquaintances then. We became friends, real serious buddies, after we started working together. We were acquaintances, we knew each other from the Chicago stuff, we did a movie together back in the late 90s. It was the National Memorial Day Concert and my coming and spending time that kind of galvanized our relationship and really began to solidify. Joe is a big military supporter and I’m out there doing things, so I asked him to become an ambassador for my foundation, which he did.  So he will do events with us and things like that whenever he can support. He’s been on “Criminal Minds” for a long time, so during the shooting season his time is limited.  We have done various things together. This is our big weekend that we spend together every year.

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The Voluntourist: You’ve done so many great TV shows and movies, but the last few years you haven’t been acting as much. Is that so you can focus more on your foundation and your work for the military?

Gary Sinise: It is a blessing to be able to say that because I’ve had some success on television, and if I hadn’t had that, the pressure would be on a lot more to go out there and continue pounding the pavement as an actor. I had a successful television series and then another couple years on “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.” Both “CSI: New York” and “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders” put me in this place where I am financially secure and I can devote some of those resources to building this service mission, which is something I am very devoted to. I have a lot of veterans in my family. I’ve been around our wounded veterans for many years going back to the “Forrest Gump” days. I’ve supported Vietnam vets going back in the 80s. I’ve got Vietnam veterans in my family and in WWII, and on and on and on. After September 11th, I felt called to a mission of service and, shortly after that, I was handed this television series that gave me all kinds of resources that I could devote to this mission. So now, “Criminal Minds” went off the air in December 2016. Much like in between “CSI: New York” and “Criminal Minds” when I had two and a half years, I just devoted all that time to the foundation and my military service mission. That’s what I’m doing, traveling all around, trying to raise money and raise awareness, and trying to keep spirits up.

The Voluntourist: A lot of people in your position would not necessarily dedicate them to the activism, so why is that so important for you?

Gary Sinise: I’ve just met extraordinary people over the years who have inspired me and motivated me and taught me. I’ve learned so much from a lot of different people and I saw on that terrible day, that we all faced as a nation, our country kind of come together in response to that. Part of that was young men and women signing up to deploy to the war zone of Iraq and Afghanistan and they started getting hurt, they started getting killed. Having Vietnam veterans in my family and remembering what it was like for them to deploy to a war zone and come home to a nation that didn’t treat them very well and turn its back on them. It troubled me to think that we would face this terrible attack on our country, and we would be going into the 21st century war on terror and our defenders would not be taken care of. I wanted them to know that I supported them, so I just started going everywhere I could to make sure that they knew that. I started to raise my hand to support many military charities out there that are trying to help in many different ways, and getting involved in events that were raising awareness, much like the National Memorial Day Concert, which is a fantastic form to highlight and spotlight the sacrifices of our defenders. I just started doing that so much that it became clear that I should start my own foundation and over the years as that has all accumulated. It is clear that I feel somewhat called to this mission and that the resources that I’ve been given, the blessings I’ve been given of this nice career that I’ve had and the financial security that that’s provided me. There is a reason for it, beyond just spending it on myself and taking care of my family of course, which is a priority. But I’ve got plenty to do that and I’ve been able to devote a lot of those resources to creating a foundation. I’ve been able to go places where most Americans never would get to go, to the war zones and different places like that and see our military in action, so that I can come back and talk as an educated person about what they do and why we should support them. Having done that so much, it feels like that’s where my life is right now, and I need to continue to serve in some way. It doesn’t mean that I won’t act again. Right now, I’ve been blessed with a lot of good fortune and it is nice to be able to do something positive with it.

The Voluntourist: I know that the band is named after your character in Forrest Gump, but where did that idea come from?

Gary Sinise: When I started visiting our troops after September 11th in the war zones through the USO, this was prior to CSI: New York. I had done a fair number of films, but I was still kind of one of those faces that you recognize, and you’ve seen in movies before, but you are not sure what the name is. When folks would recognize me in the war zones and places like that, they would recognize me as Lt. Dan and would see that face. “Lt. Dan you’ve got legs” and start making jokes. I thought when I got the band going, I don’t want to see “Gary Sinise’s Band”. Well, who is Gary Sinise? I thought if I put Lt. Dan Band in there, they would kind of put it together. When I put Gary Sinise and Lt. Dan Band, they would kind of put two and two together and figure out “oh, it’s the real Lt. Dan who is coming to play for us.” Now, we play hundreds of shows for the men and women who serve our country, and our first responders. We play hospitals and on and on. We are well known within the military community for sure, because we have played on dozens of dozens of bases all around the world. I meet people who have seen us five times on different military bases. Now they know who Gary Sinise is and my television series was on for eleven years, so we don’t have the same issue with people wondering who that is. I think early on, it made real good sense and the other reason is that that character represents something positive to our military folks. The story of Lt. Dan is really a great story, it is a resilient story, a story that had not been told about our Vietnam veterans up until that point. This is 1994 when the movie came out. Prior to that, there were Vietnam movies that had come out, but all the Vietnam veterans that were being portrayed in those movies were going through a lot of serious depression and things were not going well. At the end of the film, you would always wonder if those guys were going to be okay. At the end of Forrest Gump, you know Lt. Dan is okay. That is what we want. We want our soldiers to come home from war and move on with their lives and be successful and have businesses and do alright. We’ve never seen that story before of a Vietnam veteran. It’s a resilient story, it’s a positive story, and that’s the story they [troops] want. If they get out the service, they want to know there is life after their service, and there is a good life ahead and that’s one of the nice things I like about the story; that he is okay in the end.

The Voluntourist: When did you realize he was going to be such a huge positive impact on the community?

Gary Sinise: The movie was so popular in 1994 and that changed a lot of things for me as an actor. I hadn’t done that many movies prior to Forrest Gump. I’d only done a few, so nobody knew who I was at that point. But I got a call from the Disabled American Veterans organization, the DAV, about four weeks after the movie came out. The DAV have 1.5 million disabled veterans that are a part of that organization and, at that time, they were going all the way back to WWII. These are wounded guys and gals who were banged up in service and they were a part of the DAV organization. I didn’t know anything about them, but they’ve been around for ninety years or something like that. They contacted me and invited me to come to their national convention. They wanted to give me an award for playing Lt. Dan. I walked out on stage and there were 2,000 wounded veterans in the audience, and they were all clapping and applauding and everything. I realized at that time, this character represents something really positive to them. That’s why they have asked me to come to their national convention. They gave me their National Commanders Award for playing an injured veteran in a positive way and bringing the wounded veteran back into the consciousness of the American people. When you think about that, why should we have to bring the wounded veteran back into the consciousness of the American people? They aren’t always at the forefront of our thinking. They serve, they get banged up, and they disappear. Lt. Dan sort of brought them back. In some way they felt that Lt. Dan and the positive story was bringing that wounded soldier, their stories, to life in a positive way. I realized that for our veteran community, at that time, this character was bigger than just a movie part I was playing. This was their story and it has been that way ever since.