Name: Why Gary Sinise Became an Advocate for Veterans
Uploaded: 2025-11-11T17:34:53.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Gary Sinise Became an Advocate for Veterans' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Why Gary Sinise Became an Advocate for Veterans' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-11. Transcript available.

because there's kind of this theory i feel like with you for some people that
don't know that you
got into like the lieutenant dan character right and you got into it so much
that you were just
like i am now this is like my life calling uh it's it's kind of it's kind of
what happened or is
that but that no i mean i have vietnam veterans in my family i was playing a vietnam
veteran
lieutenant dan and so prior to playing him i was like keyed up and tuned up to
that because
with vietnam veterans and my family i i you know i was i was in high school i
was a senior in high
school when combat operations ended in vietnam wow in 1973 so i remember people
coming home and
then i met my wife and she introduced me to her two brothers who served her
sister's husband served
in vietnam so i was kind of tuned up to what was going on with our vietnam
veterans had a lot of
compassion for them and what happened when they came home you know they were
not treated well at all it
was a difficult time for our country difficult time to be a soldier and then
when lieutenant dan came
around i had the opportunity to audition for it i very much wanted to get that
part i was lucky to get
that and then i just started i mean i remember getting invited to the disabled
american veterans
organization convention uh about five or six weeks after forrest gump came out
and they wanted to give me an award for playing a wounded veteran
and this was an organization that at that time represented 1.5 million wounded
veterans going
back to world war ii all the way up to the gulf war this because this is 94 and
i walk out on the
stage get introduced and i walk out on the stage there yeah that's the picture
of it um and they gave me
their national commander's award and the guy there richard marbs he's he's got
one leg he's missing one
leg up to his hip and he's standing on crutches there and i looked out into the
audience and i saw
2 000 wounded veterans out there in the in the crowd wow and it was very very
moving i mean
it really right now it's moving to me to even imagine that somebody saw that
and it was very impactful
and that started me supporting our wounded um going back to that time and then
september 11th happened
and i just turned it into a full-time mission wow yeah it was it was there i
met a lot of interesting
people over the years i started going on uso tours in 2003 i started going to
the bases uh qatar was one
one of the first bases i went to on my first overseas us to really yeah it's a
beautiful base
yeah we were we were there we were in um um iraq we were in kuwait um that was
a that was a big tour
that kid rock was on and leanne womack was on that tour oh yeah robert de niro
was on the tour i mean
paul rodriguez comedians were on the on the tour it was uh there there were a
lot of entertainers it
was called project salute and that's uh that's some footage there from that
very first trip that's
overseas to to iraq and kuwait uh this is me going out to a place called camp
udari which was right on
the iraq iraq kuwait border and i saw thousands of troops that day and it was
it was very impactful
to go out there see these people in the war zones see what they were doing
shake hands with them
i wanted to talk to everybody and i didn't have time because you know there
were so many people lined
up to to see us but we entertained well you know we um i i didn't do anything
except i'm lieutenant dan
and i'm waving to everybody and shaking hands and taking pictures but kid kid
rock put on the show
sure yeah bob's been in here bob's ridiculous he lives across town he's one of
he's one of a kind
good good good good good guy we've known each other since that oh you have that
trip he's got a big
heart dude he's a uh yeah he's a he loves our military really yeah yeah we
spend a good bit of time
together he's a special guy what's something um yeah because you just had like
you you had so many
like kind of iconic roles like um you know and we're in so many like just you
know films that
really touch people um you know the green mile i remember of mice and men that's
crazy dude did you
see that in high school yeah i remember dude you know do you know how many you
know how many people
even on the spectrum were not allowed to have a pet after that movie
you know how many you can't have a dog oh dude you know how many of my
neighbors oh no
got their pets taken away after that i never thought of that oh dude it was
yeah it took like
a month to get them back for some of us that's hilarious but that just so many
special roles um
but then it feels like you really kind of found this uh like a a role that
really like like almost a
bigger role um in this space of service you know and of feeling like even just
showing up somewhere
and giving of yourself you know um with the veterans in my family and
especially the vietnam veterans i
have i have world war ii and world war one on my side of the family career era
my dad was in the navy
during korea my grandfather in world war one my two uncles in world war two so
but it was when i met the
vietnam veterans on my wife's side of the family and that was very impactful
because they had not been
treated well and i started to have a lot of compassion for them and feel very
very badly so when we
uh were attacked on september 11th and our you know young men and women started
raising their hand and
joining the military and going off to afghanistan and iraq and uh i wanted to
do something to support
them i just felt a lot of compassion for for them having veterans in my own
family and having seen
what happened to our vietnam veterans when they went off to war and it was
starting to
if you recall uh the iraq war was starting to be you know the country was
starting to divide itself over
whether we should be there or not and and all of that and i didn't want our
service members to get
caught in the middle of all that so i just started raising my hand and going
out and supporting them
where i couldn't that led to all these non-profits that i supported and then i
just started my own
um and that's the gary sinis foundation yeah yeah yeah how do you stay out of
the minute like how do
you stay out of the political side of things right like because i'm sure
sometimes that like you were
saying with vietnam it was probably one of the first times that soldiers came
back and a lot of people
didn't agree with them being there and it's like it's not really their fault
right they're just signing
up to protect like the freedoms that we have right like like my job is freedom
of speech my job
doesn't even exist if it's not for somebody out there protecting it right you're
you're you're
absolutely right but so how do you stay out of that like is that tough
sometimes to stay out of like
the political side of it and just focus on the like boots on the ground or or
do you like is that does
that make any sense that question i didn't care about that stuff all what i did
care about was them
feeling uh kind of a negative thing coming at them from the country and we were
starting to divide at
that point you know after september 11th everyone was sort of united you know
in you know i mean we
got smacked on september 11th that was a real turning point for me towards
service uh in a in a greater
way but our country was sort of you know reeling from that and remember we were
all in pain we were
all scared nobody knew what was going on uh we wanted you know our troops to go
over there and do
something find this bad guy that did that to us and you know everybody was sort
of united behind that
as time went on though you started to feel like okay we're you know we don't
support george bush
going into iraq and and i didn't want our troops to get caught in the middle of
that so i just said
you know what can i do as an entertainer you know as somebody that they
recognize from the movies i can
go over there and shake hands with them and tell them hey you know we
appreciate you we don't uh you
know we don't take what you're doing for for granted uh and i started doing
that and then i did it
some more and more and more and more and the more i did it the more i felt like
i was having a a positive
effect on people that were away from their families losing friends you know
getting blown up ending up
in the hospital multiple limbs amputated all these terrible things that were
happening and i felt like
i was bringing some positive light into their world which was you know pretty
difficult time i mean if
you're over there and you lose 10 buddies and then you lose your legs you've
got you've got a long way
uh a long road ahead and i wanted to help them i want you know the real life
lieutenant dan's i wanted
to help them out and i wanted to help the families out who were losing loved
ones and i just felt that was a
role that i could play and now it's just a big big part of life yeah you were
right you know um i i think
so we we can't let our service members get caught in the middle of stuff if you
volunteer to serve your
country what what do you volunteer for to do what they want you to do you don't
have a question you
know and if they send you into a war zone you got to go right so they're just
doing their duty and i
want to i want to support them and help them through the difficulties of going
to war and
and the things that they see and the things that happen to them