Faith, Family, and Freedom

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Because of Veterans Day this week, veterans have been in focus in the national media and in local communities. I recently watched a great interview with someone who has devoted much of his life to veterans. I thought I would share a few quotes with you as a way to encourage viewers to watch it on Great American PureFlix. (I was recently interviewed by Great American Journal Link: https://www.pureflix.com/insider).

A few months ago, Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Great American Media, interviewed actor and veterans advocate Gary Sinise for Great American Pure Flix.

Great American Pure Flix is a leading faith and family streaming service that inspires, uplifts, and entertains with content you can confidently stream with the entire family. It’s entertainment without compromise—celebrating faith, family, and country. The destination for the best faith library including new and original mysteries, dramas, kids content, Christmas content, and more.

When Abbott asked Sinise what inspired him to support veterans, Sinise said he was first inspired by the veterans in his own family, his uncles who were World War II veterans. He later was inspired by his wife’s side of the family. When he got to know his wife’s brothers and her sister’s husband, who all served in Vietnam, he developed a lot of compassion for what happened to America’s Vietnam veterans when they returned from war. Instead of the welcome home parades that embraced World War II soldiers returning home, they faced angry protests and an attitude of grievance over gratitude.

Sinise observed that the country had basically turned its back its Vietnam veterans.

“It was a divided time in our nation. Our veterans just kind of fell through the cracks. In some ways, they were abused and mistreated,” Sinise said.

Protests against the draft that sent members of the baby boomer generation to Vietnam ranged from demonstrations and sit-ins to protesters publicly burning their draft cards. The first supersized protest occurred in April 1965, in Washington, D.C., which attracted over 20,000 participants. Two years later, 300,000 demonstrators marched in New York City, while 50,000 protesters marched to the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

This opposition motivated Sinise to talk to family members about their military experiences. Then along came the movie Forrest Gump, where Sinise played Lt. Dan, a disabled Vietnam veteran.

“So in the ‘80s I started supporting Vietnam veterans in different ways and then I played a Vietnam veteran in Forrest Gump in the 1990s. That led me to start working with our wounded because Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump was a wounded soldier, a Vietnam veteran.”

This experience motivated him to work with the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) organization, which represented 1.5 million wounded veterans at the time. Then when the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks took place, the whole country shifted into a wartime mindset.

“Our country is attacked and we get hit and people started raising their hand to to sign up and go defend the country,” Sinise explained.

He realized that everything he’d been doing—talking to Vietnam veteran family members and volunteering with DAV—culminated in creating “my own non-profit, the Gary Sinise Foundation.”

Although Gulf War veterans came home to a warm reception in the early 1990s, there was a lot of controversy as time wore on in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sinise didn’t want to see a repeat of how the Vietnam War veterans were treated when Afghanistan and Iraqi veterans returned home.

“That motivated me to go out there and try to help our service members, to go visit the war zones and to try to make sure that people who had deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq knew that there was a grateful nation behind them, even though there was some division with regards to whether we should be in Iraq or not.”

He also pointed out the way our society is today.

“I think it is different now, even though we went through those divisions about whether we should be in Iraq or not…. Our fellow citizens who said ‘well I’m not going to let the men and women who are serving our country get caught in the middle of all this division,” Sinise told Abbott.

“I’m going to do something to show them that they’re appreciated and supported. There are a lot of people in the country now that really want to take some sort of action to make sure that people who volunteer to serve our country and go into harm’s way know that that people appreciate what they’re doing.”

A few years ago, I read Gary Sinise’s book, Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service. He talked about playing Lt. Dan and the impact he experienced after meeting a wounded veteran. This inspired me to write a scene in my screenplay White House Phoenix, which is adapted from my book, The Burning of the White House.

I knew that Dolley Madison started a non-profit after the British military burned the White House in 1814. I also knew that Dolley was incredibly charismatic. Politicians concluded that James Madison won the presidency in part because of his wife’s charisma and contagious support of him. Needing to fill a gap in the known facts and inspired by Sinise’s story of meeting a wounded warrior, I wrote a scene showing President James Madison meeting a wounded and dying warrior from the War of 1812. When Madison realized that this soldier was leaving behind a daughter, he better understood the need for Dolley’s orphanage. Dolley was the first wife of a president to engage in public service beyond White House hospitality. Though her nonprofit’s focus has changed over the years, this charity still exists as the Hillcrest Children and Family Center in Washington, DC. Dolley is known as the first, first lady because the term was first used at her funeral.

Today, the Gary Sinise Foundation focuses on several initiatives, such as building custom homes for wounded veterans, providing equipment for first responders, and arranging educational opportunities for students to visit the national World War II memorial and the 911 memorials. The foundation also sponsors an annual retreat for gold star families, which has included trips to Disney World. In addition, his Lt. Dan band plays benefit concerts among other activities.

You can learn more about Gary Sinise through his interview by Bill Abbott on Great American Pure Flix. He also poignantly talks about the death of his son to a rare form of cancer and the beautiful music that his son Mac Sinise wrote and recorded.

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