Transcript: Actor Gary Sinise on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #623

You know, we played there summer of 2024. They did a really fun thing. We were talking about having my band come there at some point to the Opry. And it was the 30th anniversary of Forrest Gump coming out that summer. So they did “Opry celebrates 30 years of Forrest Gump.” And we went and we played and we had a bunch of people on the bill.

THEO VON: Did you guys play any songs from the movie?

GARY SINISE: Well, everybody did. That’s what was cool about the night is we had Gary Levox from Rascal Flatts. He was on the bill. Jamey Johnson.

THEO VON: Jamey Johnson’s the best.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, Jamey. And he’ll be there on Tuesday when we play. Tuesday is great. And then when we did the 30th anniversary, it was great. And they had the idea that everybody on the bill would do songs from the soundtrack of Forrest Gump. That’s so cool. So we all did.

THEO VON: What a fun night.

GARY SINISE: It was really fun.

THEO VON: Does the band rehearse a lot?

GARY SINISE: You know, I mean, I’ve been doing it with this band for over 20 years. So we will rehearse once or twice a year.

THEO VON: Yeah.

GARY SINISE: And it’s all about learning some new songs. Got it. You know, sometimes we can plug those in in our sound check. We just give a little extra time for sound check and we work on a new song. But we play a lot of the same songs because my band, the whole purpose of my band is the military veterans first responders mission.

So I take the band on military bases and military hospitals and do all that kind of stuff. I don’t play for money. This is what I do for a mission. It’s a service mission. I have to pay the band. I have to pay the production costs of the staging, of course.

THEO VON: And that stuff’s pricey. People don’t realize it. There’s costs with that.

GARY SINISE: And we have a big band. If you look at my band, there’s me plus 12. So there’s 13 of us. It’s not cheap. Yeah, it’s an expensive show, but it’s a good show. We play a lot of good songs.

Musical Beginnings

THEO VON: Were you always a musician?

GARY SINISE: Well, back in fourth grade I got my first guitar and this goes back to the 60s, so Beach Boys were my band and I started listening to them a lot and trying to play their songs. And then I got my guitar and then in seventh grade I got a bass and I started playing bass and then played all the way through high school into my early 20s.

And then I got very busy with acting and started a theater company and got very busy with that. So I didn’t play for a long time until the late 90s. I started picking it up again. And now we’ve formed a band and started going on military bases and overseas. We’ve done over 600 something shows for the military.

THEO VON: Wow, that’s incredible, man. Thank you so much for your service, for supporting the people who serve. Yeah, whenever I was first starting out in comedy, we would do a bunch of USO affiliated kind of tours where you would go. And we went to so many unique places that you don’t even think that there’s bases, that you don’t even think that there’s people. We went to the Azores.

GARY SINISE: Oh my gosh.

THEO VON: We went to places in Spain, just places you don’t even think that there’s bases and there’s people there.

GARY SINISE: You know what? How many bases do you think there are that the US has in the world?

THEO VON: I mean, I couldn’t even guess.

Supporting Military Bases Worldwide

GARY SINISE: I think it’s about 800 bases. From the big giant ones, you know, like Fort Bragg or something like that, to very, very tiny ones in little remote areas like you said. And a lot of them don’t get a lot of support or entertainment, that kind of thing. I think it’s 750, 800 bases, something like that. What’s that say? Yeah, it’s over 750. Yeah, 877 US military bases. Yeah, that’s a lot of bases.

When I started out with this, my goal was to hit every single one of them. And then I realized, well, I think I’m about 25% of the way there. I think I’ve played about 200 bases. Wow, that’s cool.

THEO VON: Oh, there’s something about, I went to Qatar a couple of months ago.

GARY SINISE: Sure. Yeah.

THEO VON: The President was doing something there and they invited me to come. And so it was just, but you get there and were you…

GARY SINISE: On that big Middle East tour?

THEO VON: I wasn’t on the whole thing. I was just on Qatar and it was a last minute thing.

GARY SINISE: Central Command.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah. And they’re like, do you want to come? You have to get on a plane in five hours. And I was like, yeah. And dude, but even the best part of it was when you walk up, there’s all these soldiers in line because I don’t feel it’s mandatory that they go to this event, but I think a lot of them wanted to. It’s probably a fun thing to do on the base that day.

GARY SINISE: Oh, sure, yeah. Anything to break up the day. Yeah, that’s for sure.

THEO VON: And just to walk up and a lot of them were like, “Hey, what’s up?” And just like that moment alone, not for me, but for both of us kind of, is just that I got to be, it was just awesome, man. That’s what it’s like. Yeah, it was just awesome. And then, yeah, you see guys who are away from their families and then you have friends whose families are away. Just all of it, you know.

I don’t know, being close to it, you get to kind of see so much of what it’s about. Did you, because there’s kind of this theory, I feel like with you, for some people that don’t know, that you got into the Lieutenant Dan character, right? And you got into it so much that you were just like, I am now, this is my life calling. It’s kind of…

GARY SINISE: It’s kind of what happened.

THEO VON: Or is that…

The Lieutenant Dan Effect

GARY SINISE: 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 keyed up and tuned up to that. Because with Vietnam veterans in my family, you know, I was in high school, I was a senior in high school when combat operations ended in Vietnam 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 it. And then I just started, I mean, I remember getting invited to the Disabled American Veterans Organization convention 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, because this is 1994. And I walk out on the stage, get introduced, and I walk out on the stage there. Yeah, that’s a picture of it. And they gave me their national commander’s. The guy there, Richard Marbs, he’s got one leg. He’s missing one leg up to his hip. He’s standing on crutches there.

And I looked out into the audience and I saw 2,000 wounded veterans out there in the crowd. And it was very, very moving. I mean, I feel it right now.

THEO VON: It’s moving to me to even imagine that somebody saw that.

GARY SINISE: And it was very impactful. And that started me supporting our wounded going back to that time. And then September 11th happened, and I just turned it into a full time mission. Wow. I’ve met a lot of interesting people over the years. I started going on USO tours in 2003. I started going to the bases. Qatar was one of the first bases I went to on my first overseas USO. Really? Yeah.

THEO VON: It’s a beautiful base.

First USO Tour to Iraq and Kuwait

GARY SINISE: Yeah, we were there. We were in Iraq. We were in Kuwait. That was a, that was a big tour that Kid Rock was on. And LeAnn Womack was on that tour. Yeah, Robert De Niro was on the tour. I mean, Paul Rodriguez, comedians were on the tour. There were a lot of entertainers. It was called Project Salute.

And that’s some footage there from that very first trip overseas to Iraq and Kuwait. This is me going out to a place called Camp Udairi, which was right on the Iraq-Kuwait border. And I saw thousands of troops that day. And 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 there were so many people lined up to see us. But we entertained. You know, I didn’t do anything, except I’m Lieutenant Dan and I’m waving at everybody and shaking hands and taking pictures. But Kid Rock put on the show.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, Bob’s been in here. Bob’s ridiculous. He lives across town. He’s one of, he’s one of a kind.

GARY SINISE: Good guy. We’ve known each other since that trip.

THEO VON: Oh, you have? He’s got a big heart, dude. He’s a, yeah, he’s a…

GARY SINISE: He loves our military. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

THEO VON: We spend a good bit of time together. He’s a special guy. What’s something, yeah, because you just had so many iconic roles, you know, and were in so many films that really touch people, you know, The Green Mile, I remember Of Mice and Men. That’s crazy, dude.

GARY SINISE: Did you see that in high school?

THEO VON: Yeah, I remember. Dude, 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…

GARY SINISE: You can’t have a dog.

THEO VON: You know how many of my neighbors got their pets taken away after that?

GARY SINISE: I never thought of that.

THEO VON: 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. But then it feels like you really kind of found this, like a role that really, like almost a bigger role in this space of service, you know, and of feeling like even just showing up somewhere and giving of yourself.

GARY SINISE: With the veterans in my family, and especially the Vietnam veterans, I have World War II and World War I on my side of the family. Korea era. My dad was in the Navy during Korea, my grandfather in World War I, my two uncles in World War II.

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 badly.

So when we were attacked on September 11, and our young men and women started raising their hand and joining the military and going off to Afghanistan, Iraq, and I wanted to do something to support them, I just felt a lot of compassion 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, the Iraq war was starting to be, the country was starting to divide itself over whether we should be there or not 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 could. And that led to all these nonprofits that I supported, and then I just started my own.

THEO VON: And that’s the Gary Sinise Foundation.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Staying Out of Politics

THEO VON: 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, my job is freedom of speech. My job doesn’t even exist if it’s not for somebody out there protecting it. Right.

GARY SINISE: You’re absolutely right.

THEO VON: 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 do you, like, is that, does that make any sense, that question?

GARY SINISE: I didn’t care about that stuff. What I did care about was them feeling kind of a negative thing coming at them from the country. And we were starting to divide at that point. After September 11th, everyone was sort of united. I mean, we got smacked on September 11th. That was a real turning point for me towards service in a greater way.

But our country was sort of reeling from that. Remember, we were all in pain. We were all scared. Nobody knew what was going on. We wanted our troops to go over there and do something, find this bad guy that did that to us. And everybody was sort of united behind that.

As time went on, though, you started to feel like, okay, we don’t support George Bush going into Iraq. And I didn’t want our troops to get caught in the middle of that. So I just said, what can I do as an entertainer? As somebody that they recognize from the movies? I can go over there and shake hands with them and tell them, hey, we appreciate you. We don’t take what you’re doing for granted.

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 positive effect on people that were away from their families, losing friends, 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 pretty difficult time. I mean, if you’re over there and you lose 10 buddies and then you lose your legs, you’ve got a long way, a long road ahead. And I wanted to help them. The real life Lt. 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.

THEO VON: Yeah, you were right.

GARY SINISE: We can’t let our service members get caught in the middle of stuff. If you volunteer to serve your country, what do you volunteer for? To do what they want you to do. You don’t have a question. If they send you into a war zone, you got to go, right? So they’re just doing their duty, and I want to support them and help them through the difficulties of going to war and the things that they see and the things that happen to them.

Moments on Military Bases

THEO VON: I remember one time on a base, we were there, and something, I think it was in Arifjan or one of those bases near there, and everybody was in the hospital. Something had happened. Something had come into the base, and somebody had taken shrapnel or something, and they were losing a lot of blood.

And they basically had this hallway lined up in this hospital of people literally going through and donating blood. It was like, I mean, there may have been 100 people in the hallway, and they’re like, hey, can you just kind of go through and just try to boost people’s spirits.

And it was like, man, it was just a kind of a harrowing moment because you’re like, I don’t know these people, right? I’m not one of them. I’m one of them in the sense that I’m an American, and I have empathy, maybe something. There’s something there, like a human connection. But, man, that was like, heartbreaking.

And so you’re just kind of passing out waters and shaking hands and just patting people on the chest or trying to do anything that you felt like maybe God was pushing you to do without being egotistical, to try and just be there and support sometimes.

GARY SINISE: But you were there, right? They had to be there. You did not. And so that was a special thing, the fact that you took the time to go over there to do that, to pat them on the back, to shake their hand, to hand them a water bottle, to tell some jokes, to break up their day a little bit, help them through that experience.

I’m sure that was profoundly impactful for you, but it was also very meaningful for them. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, and it’s helpful to have somebody from home show up and say, hey, thanks for what you’re doing.

THEO VON: And the next day they found out that the guy didn’t make it, and it was just like it was. Have you had moments like that on these bases? Like, what kind of moments do you kind of experience on some of these bases? Have you been in some moments where it’s, have you been on bases where it’s a night where it’s like, man, a lot’s happened today, and it might be a tough night for these guys to come and enjoy some music or what are some of the things we don’t see as regular civilians of what base life is like?

GARY SINISE: When you go to a war zone, you’re keenly aware that at any moment, for any one of these folks that you’re meeting, any of these soldiers who are infantry especially, or something like that, that at any point they could get called out to a mission, get in the Humvee or get in the tank or whatever, go out on a mission and something bad could happen to them. And you’re keenly aware of that.

And that’s happened to me multiple times where I’ll be taking pictures with a thousand people or something like that. And I know that at any minute they could get called on a mission, and that could be their last mission. Anything could happen. So the 20 seconds that I spend with them or something like that can be very meaningful.

I’ve had mothers come up to me with photographs of me and their son, who was, he was killed the next day after. Like, this is the last picture that was taken. And as soon as he got that picture, he sent it home to the family, and it lit him up. And then the next day, he’s shot by a sniper or something like that.

And those types of things can impact you in a very profound way. And you don’t forget about that, and it makes you come back and do it again. I thought the first time I went to a hospital, I would, I remember it’s well over 20 years ago, and I went to Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany.

THEO VON: Landstuhl.

First Hospital Visit

GARY SINISE: It’s called Landstuhl. Yeah. And it’s where our service members, if they get hurt, it’s the…

THEO VON: First place they go. Right.

GARY SINISE: They will go to Germany. They get stabilized, and then they come home when they’re okay to be transferred. And that was the first military hospital I went to. So you’ve got people that were in Iraq yesterday who got blown up yesterday and flown to the hospital, and here they are within 24 hours of being on the battlefield, and I’m seeing them.

THEO VON: Wow.

GARY SINISE: And that was very, I was very nervous about it. I mean, I remember the first time it was kind of, I tell this story about when I was a kid, my grandmother dying in the hospital, and it was, and she was very sick, and it was just very hard to be in the hospital and see her like that. And those were my hospital memories.

And so now I’m on a bus with the USO, and I’m driving to the military hospital where our troops are first taken when they get blown up or something bad happens to them. And I’m going to see a bunch of these people, and I’m thinking this, I don’t know how I’m going to, I don’t know how I’m going to get through it. I’m nervous. I’m feeling kind of nervous in my stomach.

THEO VON: And if one of them opens their eyes and like, holy s*, Lieutenant Dan. Like, I’m in heaven. Like, where am I?

Supporting Veterans Through Film and Foundation Work

GARY SINISE: Or they’re hallucinating. You know, they’re on so much medication, they think they’re nuts. And I walked in, and I tell this story about walking into the first room, and there were like 30 people in there, and they were all banged up, but they were going to get patched up and sent back to the war zone. They weren’t injuries that would send them home. And everything was quiet.

You know, I wore glasses at the time. I had these funny little glasses on, little USO hat. And I walk in and I’m not sure what to do or what to say. Everybody’s really quiet. And somebody saw me and screamed, “Lieutenant Dan!” at me. And then everybody jumped up and wanted a picture, and the whole mood changed into something positive.

And so that was, and then I went to the hospital rooms and I saw people that were missing limbs and people that were in traumatic brain injuries and just really awful stuff. But when I left there, I felt really good that I had done something positive, like purposeful. Yeah. That, you know, when I went there, it was all about me and what I was thinking about, how I’m going to react to it.

And when I left, I realized, no, it’s not about me and my reaction to it. It’s about just bringing some joy, bringing some light into a dark situation and trying to lift somebody up, and that’s the energy you get. So that made me want to go back.

Two weeks later, I was at Walter Reed, and then I was at another hospital, Naval Medical Center at Bethesda. And then it’s just, now it’s hundreds of trips and, you know, multiple thousands and thousands of wounded service members and family members. We take care of, you know, families of our fallen heroes. And, you know, you wrap your arms around these kids that have lost a mom or a dad in the military, or even our first responders, firefighters, police officers, we take care of all of them.

And, you know, you just, you know, you’re doing something positive, and it helps you get through the difficult moments where you meet somebody that’s really been through some really bad stuff, but I’m just there to help them through. So you kind of learn, you know, how it’s not about you at all. It’s about them and what you want them to get out of you.

Giving them a hug or patting them on the back or telling them you appreciate them, and that’s rewarding. That gives life great purpose to be able to take something. I’m in the movie business. I walk into a room, they see Lieutenant Dan or something, but it makes Lieutenant Dan so much more meaningful when he can actually do something positive for somebody else.

THEO VON: Yeah, he wasn’t a character that just kind of ended right there like he wasn’t a character who just had this. You know what I’m saying? Like it was.

GARY SINISE: Yeah. No, it wasn’t. I realized at a certain point, Lieutenant Dan’s just going to, that’s, he’s just part of my life now because so many soldiers relate to him. And, you know, I’d go into the hospitals and I see somebody missing both legs like Lieutenant Dan, and they just, they want me to talk about the story of Lieutenant Dan.

And, you know, the story of Lieutenant Dan is very positive, actually. He goes through dark stuff, but it’s a happy ending in the end, so.

THEO VON: Yeah, at the end. Did he own a car wash or something? What did he do for a living at the end?

Lieutenant Dan’s Happy Ending

GARY SINISE: No, he’s a shrimp guy. Oh, yeah, he’s a shrimp guy. He makes a bunch of, yeah, they make a bunch of money on shrimp. And then he invests in Apple. He’s like an early investor in Apple and they both make a gazillion dollars in Apple. And, you know, he’s doing well. Look at him. He’s married.

At the end, he’s standing up on prosthetic legs and it’s a happy ending. And you pull for a guy like that in a movie and you want him to be okay. And so many of the other movies that came out, you know, in the late 70s, early 80s about Vietnam, you know, you just, you always had this feeling that the Vietnam veteran wasn’t going to make it right? He wasn’t going to be okay. Something bad was going to happen to him.

And with Forrest Gump, it was different. It was a new look at a Vietnam veteran who came home from war, processed everything, and then moved on.

THEO VON: Recently, I’ve been on a mission to partner with more companies that are based here in America. It’s just important to me. I had a podcast with Mike Rowe, and he told me about this company called Good Ranchers. We just had Miles Teller was just on the other day and he and I actually ended up talking about you, which is crazy because I had no idea that you were going to come on when I first started this.

My mom, she’s had two husbands that served and that passed away, but she was like, “I hope you could get Gary Sinise one day on your podcast.” She was, you’ve been her favorite guest. So this is, and she watches every episode so she’ll be excited.

GARY SINISE: Please give your mom a hug for me. Oh, you bet. Please do. I will give her one.

THEO VON: We started hugging finally about a year ago, so.

GARY SINISE: Okay, good. Well, give her two.

THEO VON: But I’ll give you, I’ll make sure to.

GARY SINISE: That’s another podcast you can tell me.

Bringing Veterans Home

THEO VON: Miles Teller was on and he was talking about just working with servicemen and he was talking about just his experience. He had a film called “Thank You for Your Service,” I think it was. And he said that a lot of times it’s like, we know how to package these people and get them ready to go off to war, to serve, to be on the front lines, to protect our freedoms, but we don’t bring them home very well.

What do you notice in your experience with a lot of this, with spending time with a lot of these people? What do you think that we can do better as a country and then just as everyday people? If there’s any, and I know this isn’t judgment, but what do you kind of survey? Haven’t had a lot of experience.

GARY SINISE: Well, Miles has a point about that. And we learned a lot during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. I mean, the military, the various branches of the military did start to address that. We need to fight the war on the battlefield, but we have to make sure that we don’t leave the war on the battlefield and neglect the war that’s coming on, that’s going on at home, you know, when our service members return.

So we’ve been involved at the Gary Sinise Foundation in a number of initiatives, a number of programs to address that. Coming home, transitioning from the battlefield to home, coming back to your family. There was a movie that I was involved in that I was executive producer on back during the Iraq war called “Brothers at War.”

And it was all about that experience of going off to war and then coming back and kind of reintegrating with the family and how difficult that can be when you’ve seen people blown up and seen people go through difficult things. This was a buddy of mine who had two brothers that were serving in Iraq, and he wasn’t serving, but he embedded with units over in Iraq and he made a documentary.

His name’s Jake Rademacher and Jake’s a buddy of mine. I ended up being executive producer on this film. And then recently we decided, because there’s so many people in the movie that we meet, not just the two brothers, but we meet the people that they’re serving with and we get to know them in that particular film.

We started talking, you know, 10 years later, after the movie about like, where are those guys? What happened to everybody that was in that first film? Are they out of the service now? What’s their transition out of the service been like?

So we’ve just done, we’ve got a new movie out now called “Brothers After War” and “Brothers After War.” “Brothers at War” deals with military life, what it’s like to go off and serve, come home, then get deployed again. Because many of our service members would redeploy multiple times. That could be very tough on the family.

Just imagine a child, you know, growing up with mom or dad deploying 10 times over a 12 year period and they’re never home and the child is growing up. It’s very, very difficult. So “Brothers After War” deals with the transitioning veteran, the person who’s come home and now they’re out of the service.

Most of the people that we meet in “Brothers After War” that we met in the first movie “Brothers at War” are out of the service. A few of them, Jake’s brothers, were just finishing up their service.

THEO VON: The Rademachers.

GARY SINISE: The Rademachers, yeah. Two brothers.

THEO VON: Thank you for your service.

Using Film to Help Veterans Heal

GARY SINISE: So you meet them, and it’s a beautiful documentary. I mean, both of them are very beautiful. And we use these movies to help our veterans. We used the first movie. Jake has done hundreds of workshops on military bases showing the movie. And he hands out workbooks to everybody and says, “What did you feel about this when you saw this? The soldier coming home, dealing with his children who haven’t seen him for a long time.”

All these, and all these people kind of start expressing themselves, start talking about it. And we have so many service members that come home and they don’t talk about it. Right. They compartmentalize. They keep it in, and sometimes it explodes in a very bad and damaging way. And we don’t want that to happen.

We want to combat the suicide problem that we have within the services and do everything we can to be proactive to go after it and provide mental wellness initiatives so that we can help these people transition. That’s what both these movies are about, and they really are helpful. Jake is now doing workshops with “Brothers After War” for veterans, “Brothers at War.”

THEO VON: And “Brothers After War.”

GARY SINISE: Yeah, very, very positive movies. “Brothers After War” was totally funded by the Gary Sinise Foundation. And thankfully, our donors allow me to do a lot of great things. And for our donors, they should know that this movie is making a difference in people’s lives. We are helping veterans.

That’s Jake doing a workshop there for “Brothers After War.” We’re making a positive impact, but there’s so much more that we can do. Thankfully, there are a lot of nonprofits out there that are focused on this. We have other mental wellness initiatives. We work with an organization called Boulder Crest Foundation. Boulder Crest, they provide retreats all around the country for veterans to go to.

We’ve sent hundreds of veterans to these retreats that can be very, very positive, because so many people come home and then they isolate. And we don’t want them to do that. We want them to tell their stories. We want to teach them how to share their stories and that it’s okay to share their stories.

We saw Vietnam veterans come home from war, and they had to keep everything inside, and it was not good. And we don’t want that to happen to anybody serving our country. So we provide a lot of programs and initiatives with Gary Sinise Foundation to help them through that.

THEO VON: Well, we’re going to make a donation today, Gary. So thank you. Oh, thanks. Yeah, we’ll donate $10,000 today just to support the foundation.

GARY SINISE: Holy cow.

Supporting Veterans Through Private and Public Sectors

THEO VON: So I know it’s not the largest donation you’ve gotten, but we’re happy to do that on behalf of our podcast today. It feels like it’s falling upon the private sector to take care of a lot of our servicemen and women. Is that a true feeling, do you think? Or do you think that the government is still doing a good job? And then do you think one political party really does it better than the other? Have you noticed any of that? And if you feel uncomfortable talking about that, that’s okay. I don’t want to put you in any weird spot.

GARY SINISE: There’s two things. Just imagine, okay, if there were no nonprofits in the military and first responder community that are trying to fill the gaps and help, we’d have a catastrophe.

THEO VON: Wow.

GARY SINISE: And if there was no VA system, we’d have a catastrophe. So both of them are necessary, but I don’t think the government can provide all the help that is needed for our veteran community. It’s just a large community. We have veterans going back pretty far. And some of, like, look at our Vietnam veterans, for example, they’re aging into their 70s and 80s, and things are a little tougher for them because they’re aging. They might have needs that they didn’t have 20 or 30 years ago.

Will the government provide everything that’s necessary for all the people that have served our country over the years? While they may try, I don’t think it’s possible. I think the nonprofits play a pretty significant role in this. And so take the nonprofits away, and we’d have a real serious problem.

THEO VON: Got it.

GARY SINISE: But we have to work together. And so the VA is just one of those large bureaucracies that we have. I mean, there’s many, many VA hospitals around the country. There are a lot of hospitals that need upgrades because they’ve been around a long time. And so we constantly have to reinvest in that within the government. My dad got help from the VA, so that was good.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. But my stepdad did for sure. I think he was in Korea, and he got help from the VA.

GARY SINISE: But now the nonprofits play a very, very significant role. And there are certain things that the VA does well, and there’s certain things that they don’t do well. There’s certain things that nonprofits could do better at, but there’s a lot of things that nonprofits do that are really making a difference. And I think we have to all work together constantly to do everything we possibly can to serve the men and women who have served our country and protect our freedoms and keep us safe. Our first responders as well. We have many programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation that are serving all these communities.

A Message to Lawmakers

THEO VON: What would you say then, just to any lawmakers who are listening? Right. Because we’ve talked, we’ve had a lot of politicians on this show. We’ve had a lot of people come through. We’ve gotten to express things to them about different laws and things that we would like to see changed. Is there anything to lawmakers that you would say if there were any lawmakers listening? Is there anything that you would say to them based on your experiences that could be done or that could be different, or is that too broad of a thing to even ask?

GARY SINISE: Democrats and Republicans serve our country in military uniform. So do we owe them or do we not? And if you’re in government, I always believe we can never do enough for the men and women to serve our country. So let’s make sure that they don’t get caught in some political game that’s going on.

THEO VON: Yeah.

GARY SINISE: Right now we have a government shutdown going on right now. And so certain people are struggling. We don’t want that to happen to our military service members. They’re going to serve no matter what.

THEO VON: The stress of that, knowing the government shut down, that has to feel weird for some of them, especially some of the older ones who are going to VA, wondering if in a month they’re still going to be able to get, if the place they’re going to or that they’re getting housing from is still going to be available. It could just be a fear. The stress of so much of that is crazy.

GARY SINISE: That’s exactly right. We don’t want them to fall through the cracks because of some political thing that’s happening.

THEO VON: And it’s a political kickball that they use. And it has real life, it has real life, what word am I looking for?

GARY SINISE: Consequence.

THEO VON: Consequence.

GARY SINISE: Yeah.

THEO VON: Thank you, sir.

GARY SINISE: You’re absolutely right.

Impact of Government Shutdowns on Veterans

THEO VON: Here it says on Perplexity, it says the government shutdown in 2025 has had a significant impact on veteran affairs. Although most vets benefits and core services continue, about 37,000 Department of VA employees are furloughed or working without pay, affecting certain services and programs. Critical services that have been suspended or halted include the GI Bill hotline, which assists over 900,000 veterans, was shut down. 56 regional VA benefits offices are closed to the public. So I’m not sure how factual some of this is, but even just the fear of this, say, if I’m someone who’s looking online and I’m a veteran, the fear and stress caused by this is a lot.

GARY SINISE: I know there are things going on. For example, a lot of times when I want to go to a military base, and I have a foundation that provides uplifting events on military bases all across the country and overseas. And many times if I look at my calendar, which we’re doing right now, and I’ll figure out when I can be in different areas of the country, and then I’ll call up the general or the colonel and say, “Would you like us to come and lift up the base with some entertainment and that kind of thing?” And nine times out of 10, if the date’s available and they don’t have something else going on, they’ll want me to come.

And we provide meals. We do all kinds of things like that on military bases. Well, I’m in the process of doing that right now, winding up 2026. And a lot of the bases that I’m reaching out to are saying, “We’re kind of, we got a lot of people furloughed right now, so we can’t make any decisions. But we’re hoping that this is going to stop.”

So all this furlough stuff is already sort of slowing things down a bit. I mean, they’ll get this sorted out eventually. It’s not going to last forever and everything, but it is kind of a roadblock for them to just get on with things on a military base and continue serving our country.

And part of what I do is, everything in my foundation, all about the heartbeat of everything we do, I say this is lifting people up. It’s making them feel important, making them feel that they’re not forgotten, that we appreciate what they’re doing. So often somebody who’s serving in the military, they can just go about their daily life in the military and not even think that anybody knows what they’re doing.

THEO VON: Yeah.

GARY SINISE: And I found that my role as an entertainer and somebody who can interact with them on military bases and talk to the leaders and all that kind of stuff is to kind of let people know what they do. And I go to these military bases all the time. I’ve been to hundreds of them. And I go there, and then I come back and I talk to people like you, Theo, and I tell people what I see.

And I’ve met some of the most extraordinary people serving our country out there. Just some of my best friends are in the military. And from somebody who’s missing three limbs or four limbs to some general who served his country for 42 years and is now retired. And when I met him, he was a major or something. So I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve met extraordinary people.

I want to serve them. I don’t want them to get caught in the political games and all that stuff. These are our defenders. Where would we be if nobody wanted to do that?

Remembering Our Defenders

THEO VON: Well, if we had to sleep in fear, too? I mean, sorry. I mean, it’s a little bit scary, certainly in certain neighborhoods in different places, but the fact if you had to sleep in complete fear, and that somebody else is sleeping, is not sleeping, so you don’t have to. It’s like, yeah, the things like that we don’t think about. My dad would always make us pray for this serviceman when we were kids. I remember. I didn’t even remember that until you just said that, but yeah, the fact that some of these people did.

GARY SINISE: Yeah. How old were you?

THEO VON: I was probably six or seven, I think when I first could remember that, I was praying. But I just remember that he would do that. But I think, yeah, I think people used to have a different affinity for maybe the military or some people did. I don’t know. We had a different affinity as a country. I remember the Pledge of Allegiance was like the most important thing every morning.

GARY SINISE: Yeah.

THEO VON: The fact that we were all together was one moment where it felt like we were all together for something.

GARY SINISE: Absolutely.

The Snowball Express Program

THEO VON: Your foundation does so many unique things. I saw the Snowball Express, which was really cool. Is that what it’s called? The Snowball Express?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, that’s a program for children of our fallen heroes.

THEO VON: Yeah. Tell me. There’s a great photo I think it was from this year that you put up. Oh, this is so great. A thousand children of fallen soldiers to Disneyland. You guys all went?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, we take them. I got involved with, there was an organization that started in 2006 and they brought a bunch of kids to Disneyland in Anaheim and after they did that event, they contacted me to tell me about the event and they wanted to do it again. In 2007, they asked me to get involved and I did and started attending the event, started donating. My band started. American Airlines is a big supporter of that. They provide all the airfare, all the charter airplanes. They’ll provide 12 charters from all over the country to fly the kids.

THEO VON: Wow.

GARY SINISE: Into this event.

THEO VON: Thank you, American Airlines. That’s amazing.

Building Homes for Heroes

GARY SINISE: American Airlines. And they’ve been doing it now, going back to the beginning. And I got involved, it’s almost 20 years. And we eventually moved it from Anaheim to Dallas, which is where American Airlines is based. And so we did the event there for about nine years. And I would come bring my band and all of that.

And then I have this great relationship with Disney World. I’ve been narrating a show down there since 2000 every Christmas time. It’s called the Candlelight Processional. And I would bring my family there and I thought this is the next place that we have to bring the kids. It was going to cost a lot more money. Now that’s the Candlelight Processional. I started in 2000 and I’ve done it many, many times. I’ll be doing it again this year.

THEO VON: When do you do it?

GARY SINISE: I used to do it. Right. Sometimes I do it on Christmas or even Christmas Day. Wow. And now I do it because we’re bringing the kids there. In 2018, we folded that organization, Snowball Express, into the Gary Sinise Foundation because it was going to cost a lot more money to move it to Disney World. So we had the ability to raise the additional money.

So now we take the kids to Disney World. And so when we do two events, we do military kids and we will have close to 1,000 children who have lost a parent in military service, plus the surviving spouse, plus hundreds of volunteers. I mean, we take over an entire hotel at Disney World, 800 rooms and all that. It’s very expensive.

But what you see happening to these children when they come together and they meet each other and they meet other children that are going through the same thing, they’ve all lost a mom or a dad in the military and they’re all heartbroken kids and they’re going through all that, but they meet all these other kids and they befriend each other and they stay in touch with each other.

And then we provide year round events in states all over the country throughout the year for these families. And then after we do the military event, we bring children of fallen firefighters and police officers there and we’ll have, gosh, we’ll have 500 something kids of fallen firefighters and police officers there.

So we do two back to back events, all expense paid. We just want them to come and we want to shine a spotlight on them and we want to just wrap our arms around these families and love on them so that they know that they can go home from that and know that there’s a big, big giant community of people that care about them, that don’t forget what they’re going through, that honor their hero that they lost and think about them every day.

And that’s what we do at the Gary Sinise Foundation. We have dozens of corporate sponsors that love the event. And we probably have 2,000 people there working the event with the volunteers and the staff and the Disney folks and then the families that we bring in. It’s a gigantic event. And I’ll always send them off on an airplane and I show up at the airport. That’s what you were seeing there with me on the plane with the kids and all that.

The Role of Citizens in Supporting Military Families

THEO VON: I mean, it’s amazing. It’s nice to be reminded that there’s an organization that’s helping to fill in the gaps of the government organizations. And it’s not like, but that’s what we need, that’s what we’ve always been. It’s like we have to, in the end, we have to count on ourselves. Right. Is there a moment or two that stands out from some of the experiences on those types of weekends?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, I’m in hundreds and hundreds of families, and they’re all going through some difficult loss. And unfortunately each year there’s a new family. These are, we can’t point to a war that’s going on right now, but people are serving out there.

Yeah, unfortunately, we lose people who take their own lives because they don’t know where to turn and they feel like that’s the only way out and that leaves the family behind. We don’t want those families to feel like nobody cares. This is a family who served and sacrificed for our country. We all benefit from the service of our defenders and their families.

So we have a role to play. I think we as citizens have a role to play. I have said this, that government does a certain amount, but I don’t think we can expect government to do everything for everybody. And we have a role to play as citizens.

And if every neighborhood, every community, every town, every city, every state in the country recognize that there are veterans and military families and first responders within those communities that are struggling. And we reached out, took the initiative ourselves, within our own communities to touch those families and take care of them and let them know, hey, we’re here for you, whatever you need.

If every community did that in the country, yeah, this stuff that you hear about veterans falling through the cracks and all that stuff and being left by, they’re waiting in line for different things and stuff, all of that would be greatly reduced, all those problems if we as citizens just recognize that, hey, there are people out there that protect us, they defend us. And I appreciate that. So I’m not going to neglect, I’m not going to take it for granted.

THEO VON: And like, who in my neighborhood, who in my town, who in my township who has a family member that’s over there serving that I could stop by and say hello or do something nice for, leave a card in their mailbox or do, I’m saying just little things like that. It’s like I’m even asking myself, it’s like, how can I be a part of even just my local community to help let people around me feel recognized that their dad isn’t over there in vain, or their mother isn’t over there serving in vain, that there aren’t people thinking about them and praying for them and making themselves available. If there’s something else that the family needs.

Small Gestures, Big Impact

GARY SINISE: That little thing can make a big difference. There are big things that you can do, right? You can donate to national organizations, you can create an organization, but there are small things that you can do too. You can just pat somebody on the back and say, I appreciate you. That’s it. That gesture.

If you’re walking through an airport, you see a soldier and you pat him on the back and say, I appreciate what you’re doing. Thank you for serving our country. You don’t know if that person has just lost three buddies in something, if he’s coming home carrying a big, heavy load. And that little gesture, that little pat on the back, that little acknowledgement of what they’re doing. Yeah, that can go a long way. That can change somebody’s day in a big way. Just those little tiny gestures.

I remember, the kinds of stuff you hear about. And I made a practice of this. If I saw soldiers or something like that in a restaurant, I’d always anonymously pick up their check. I mean, this goes back a long way. Well, when I started my foundation, we created a program and we call it Serving Heroes. And now we’ve served well over a million meals on military bases, firehouses, police departments, people like that.

THEO VON: Bring me to one of the things next year if you do something.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, sure. It’s called, well, I know you live here now, so.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, now you’re stuck coming to the start, learning how to march.

GARY SINISE: You’ll be serving some heroes with us.

THEO VON: I would love to, Gary. That would mean, that would fill my heart up.

GARY SINISE: That’s it right there. Yeah, so that’s me.

THEO VON: I love macaroni.

GARY SINISE: That’s, yeah, that’s macaroni and cheese or beans or whatever it is. We always get great food and we have multiple programs at the foundation now. That little program there, just serving veterans at a VA or some military base or something like that. That little program can make a big difference.

Somebody like me comes out and dishes out the hamburgers and beans and stuff, and they call home and say, hey, guess who gave me the beans today.

THEO VON: I mean, it can be doing fine.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, it could be Lieutenant Daniel dished out the beans, but I’ve done it so many times and I love it. Remember the Palisades burning down? Yeah, we were there a couple weeks later. We were dishing out food to all the first responders, the National Guard people that were there serving hundreds of meals, just, and that kind of stuff. They just saw a lot of bad stuff, and those types of things can just help them through. Hey, I’m not doing this. Yeah, that’s the Palisades. I’m not doing, that’s Joe Montana on my right there.

THEO VON: Is it really?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, Joe and CSI on my left. Right there, that’s John Ondrasik from Five for Fighting. And they’re buddies of mine. They’re both ambassadors for my foundation. “I can’t stand to fly.”

THEO VON: Is that them?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, yeah, “Superman.” Yeah. And they’re old buddies of mine. We’ve known each other a long time. And I said, hey, we’re dishing out food. Come on over. So they came over to do it. And we do these all over the place. I mean.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, AA meetings up there all the time. I go to some big AA meetings up there in Palisades.

GARY SINISE: In the Palisades?

THEO VON: Yeah, some pretty big ones. We go to them at the VA over there. They had one over there in Westwood. In Westwood, yeah. With that golf course in the back, that crazy place?

GARY SINISE: Yes, that place. Seems like we’ve done a bunch of those serving heroes at the VA in Westwood.

THEO VON: I bet you have. That place, they just keep trying to repaint it to make it look like it’s okay. You know what I’m talking about.

GARY SINISE: I told you that some of the VAs need a little work.

THEO VON: Yeah. But it also has a really cool old school feel in there. But that’s a, yeah, I’ve been over to that one a great deal. Just to go to meetings sometimes. And sometimes I’ll sit out there and talk to some of the guys that are sitting around over there. Yeah, yeah. Please let me know if there’s something I can do, if there’s something I can help, be a part of.

GARY SINISE: I’d love to.

THEO VON: I think this is, even just the fact that you came here and are sharing this stuff with us, it’s important and to be reminded. Sometimes I just get, you get caught up in your own life so much, you forget about the things that are keeping your own.

Supporting the Foundation’s Mission

GARY SINISE: We have thousands of donors that go to the Gary Sinise Foundation and help us do all this stuff. And I’ve been blessed because I had good years in Hollywood and I’ve been able to take those resources and channel it into doing something good and then provide something that the American people can support and come on board with.

And now, like I said, we have hundreds of corporate donors that help us with all kinds of stuff. We build houses for our wounded.

THEO VON: Oh, I just heard you guys, you just built your 100th house, or what did I hear?

GARY SINISE: On Veterans Day, we give away our 99th home in Virginia. And then a couple weeks, just about nine days later, eight days later, we give away our 100th home.

THEO VON: Let’s go. How do these homes get built? That’s wild.

Building Specially Adapted Smart Homes

GARY SINISE: We have a great team of builders. These are all professionals. We don’t just get volunteers, hammer the nails and stuff. We’ve had a team of very professional builders. Our work is not the only thing they do, but they’re very, very good at building these homes.

We come in, we rally the communities around the service members we just had. Just a few days ago, we just had one of our events here in Tennessee called Walls of Honor, which is about halfway through the home. You can see the frame up in this home. We will do something before the drywall goes in. We’ll have the community and corporate sponsors and people that are part of our building, they will come and they’ll write messages on the frame.

And these are messages that are just part of the house now. These beautiful messages of support and love and appreciation. And we just had one of those events just, I was just there just a few days ago.

Supporting the Gary Sinise Foundation

THEO VON: So you’re on the go a lot with these things. This is amazing. And if people wanted to, if people do want to donate, they could just donate to Gary Sinise Foundation and it goes to all these different things.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, unless you want to designate it to something special or something like that. You can do that and they can.

THEO VON: Do it right on your website.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, just garysinisefoundation.org. It helps us to do all the things. And when I take my band out to a military base, the band is an initiative of the Gary Sinise Foundation, just one of our many, many programs that we have at the Gary Sinise Foundation to raise spirits and lift people up and to help them through.

THEO VON: No, it’s so great because sometimes you’re like, what do I give to? What do I donate to? Especially these days, we hear so many charities and you don’t really know what’s going on. And then people will create negative press about charities just to, you know, how evil it can be in the media.

But just to know firsthand, to hear all these great things, it’s like, man, this feels like a safe place. If I want to donate to that, I know that the finances are going towards something important. So that, yeah, just because so many times people don’t know what to donate to, they just pick something that they’ve heard of, which is fine. But to know that this is there, that’s super important.

GARY SINISE: Thank you. Yeah.

Mac’s Story

THEO VON: Thank you, man. Thank you so much. I know you’ve had an interesting few years. Your son got very sick in the past few years.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, Mac.

THEO VON: His name was.

GARY SINISE: His full name, Mac. First name is McKenna. And everybody called him, you know, we all called him Mac. Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh, there he is. Handsome guy. McKenna Anthony.

GARY SINISE: Yeah. Mac was, he started playing drums when he was nine years old and he just took to it right away. Just an incredible and just a natural talent and played all the way through high school and look how proud he looks right there.

THEO VON: He’s pretending to look like that, kind of off austere, you know? Well, is austere a word?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, it is. After music school, he went to USC Music School and they went on tour. He was touring around overseas and around the country with different bands and whatnot. He came to work for the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2017.

THEO VON: Wow.

GARY SINISE: He just was kind of tired of the road and I kept kind of bugging him a little bit. Well, why don’t you dip your toe in the water? Just come and work at the foundation part time. And he started to do it and he fell in love with the mission.

And that’s Mac and I on one of our trips where we took probably about 45 World War II veterans down to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. And we take them with our program called Soaring Valor. Mac fell in love with that program and just loved being around the veterans. And he was just getting so into working with the foundation.

He also was a great composer and wrote music for the foundation. And then in 2018, he was diagnosed with a very rare cancer called chordoma. It starts in the spine. And he had his initial tumor removed in September of 2018, but the cancer came back in May of 2019.

He stayed working for the foundation while he was going through treatment until the end of 2019. And then things got very, very hard for him. And you can see him there in a wheelchair. He was disabled by the cancer, couldn’t walk anymore, couldn’t play any music anymore. Wasn’t thinking about music at all for 2020, 2021, 2022, and early 2023.

Sharing Mac’s Legacy

And this is a story that you see there that I posted on the Gary Sinise Foundation website about six weeks after he died. He worked for the foundation and I wanted people to know that we lost one of our team. And people, you know, I didn’t talk about this for six years while we were going through it. We were just going through cancer and trying to fight it and hoping we would find some drugs that worked.

And Mac tried 25 different drugs during a four and a half year period and nothing worked. And it’s a rare cancer. I mean, there’s no cure for it.

So, yeah, in early 2023, though, he said to me, “Dad, I’ve been thinking about this piece of music that I wrote in college that I never finished. And I’m thinking, I’d like to try to finish it.” And, you know, he hadn’t been thinking about music at all. When he said that, I was just so knocked out by that. I said, “Yes, do it, do it.”

And so he teamed up with a couple of my band members who he knew. Mac was our number two drummer. If my guy Danny Gottlieb couldn’t be there, Mac would play. He grew up around the band. He knew all the band. Everybody loved him.

So he went to work with Dan Myers and Ben Lewis to start fleshing out this piece called “Arctic Circles.” And by July of 2023, he was in the studio right there recording. And he also played harmonica. He picked up harmonica in his hospital bed. He couldn’t play drums, so he picked up the harmonica and he started playing. And that’s Mac playing the great American classic folk tune “Shenandoah.”

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

GARY SINISE: With a string section behind him. And you can see that video. You can see “Arctic Circles” and other videos at Mac Sinise YouTube and hear some of this music on the YouTube. You can also download it.

And Mac ended up, after these sessions for “Shenandoah” and “Arctic Circles,” he decided he wanted to do a whole album. So along with his buddy Oliver Schnee, composing buddy from, that’s Oliver right there from USC, they went to work and Mac did an album called “Resurrection and Revival.”

And he finished the music, was done and ready in December of 2023, two weeks before he died. He finished the record. And we posted up this story that’s one of the sessions with my band for “Resurrection and Revival.” This story is on the Gary Sinise Foundation website.

THEO VON: Beautiful, handsome young man.

GARY SINISE: He was incredible. You can actually see right there on his nose, that’s a tumor. And you can see his spirit right there. And we’re listening to one of the pieces played back to us right there, and everybody was psyched out about it.

Remembering Mac

THEO VON: And thank you for sharing Mac with us today. Thank you for letting us think about you with him and think about him. Thank you for letting us speak his name today. And, you know, it’s important that I think when we say people’s names that aren’t here in front of us, that they feel it. That that’s a real thing, right?

To me, that feels very real. Same as when we pray for people, that all those things are very real. I think our spirits are very much alive for a long time. And so thank you for that.

GARY SINISE: Mac was a very faithful guy.

THEO VON: Was he?

GARY SINISE: Yeah. Catholic faith helped him through the most challenging, difficult stuff.

THEO VON: What was something that amazed you about your son as you’re watching him go through that?

GARY SINISE: You know, Theo, I never heard him say, you know, that “why me” stuff, or “why is this happening?” or anything like that. You know, it was just, I remember when we found out he had a tumor and the way he dealt with it was just, “Oh, that’s why my tailbone’s been hurting,” you know, for two years.

You know, he thought it was a tailbone fracture or bruise from a bike accident or something, and, “Oh, okay, so we’re going to take it out and get on with life.” And he faced it like that. He always had this sort of, he was what I called a graceful warrior. And such courage and such grace under fire.

Because this cancer was devastating. I mean, it was one thing after another. It just kept coming at us, and I was the one in the family who had to guide us, you know, through it. I stopped acting in 2019. At the end of 2019, 2020 became so difficult that I just never went back to acting. And I stayed, you know, I just stayed in a battle.

And he was the inspiration for everything. The way he courageously just faced it and just took it on the chin and took it in stride. And if we could keep him out of pain and if we could keep him, you know, from feeling too sick from the treatment and all that, he was just living.

He was, you know, he’s in a hospital bed, and we had to hoist him up with a thing called a Hoyer lift. And you lift him out of the bed and put him in a wheelchair or whatever, like one of those shrimp.

THEO VON: Net things almost, which is crazy.

GARY SINISE: Well, it’s a sling. It’s a sling that you put underneath him, and then you hook it to this arm, and then you crank it up and it lifts him out of the bed.

THEO VON: It’s kind of cool, almost like a store.

GARY SINISE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s what we had. And we had to get used to all that kind of stuff. Wheelchair vans and treatment and, you know, radiation and, you know, he had multiple surgeries and he went through all of this with such grace.

And the last year of his life, when he said he wanted to go back and write that music, in some ways, even though it was getting harder and we were running out of drug options and all of that, and his health was deteriorating, in some ways, that was one of the best years of his entire life, because he accomplished what he set out to do.

He wanted to make this record, he wanted to make this music. He wanted to resurrect and revive this old piece that he never finished, and he did it, and he did all of that. And then after he died, I found all this additional music in his files that he wrote and tucked away that some he’d written for the foundation and I had heard it.

But then I found all this other stuff going all the way back to his college days. And so I produced a second record, “Resurrection and Revival Part Two.” That’s actually a story about “Resurrection and Revival Part Two.”

THEO VON: Go back to that picture. I just want to see him. Oh, look how happy he is, huh?

Mac’s Musical Legacy Continues

GARY SINISE: And that is, we blew up a bunch of pictures of Mac and put him in the studio when we were recording. And, yeah, there they are. We put the pictures around. You had the orchestra there, they’re all playing. A lot of them played on the first record, you know.

And so we made a second record, “Resurrection and Revival Part Two,” which is a double vinyl album. And Mac wanted all the proceeds that came in if people bought the vinyl album. He wanted those proceeds to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation. And so we’ve.

THEO VON: That’s special, huh? How special for your son, just to make it such a family mission, you know.

GARY SINISE: You know what’s cool, too? You can see here, all those messages right in the middle of the screen there. There are thousands of messages that were posted on the Gary Sinise Foundation website after people read this story. And I can’t tell you how meaningful that was for people to write in and leave these messages for our family and how helpful that was for us to read.

These are from my bandmates and some of the people that worked for the foundation. But these are the messages that came in from the general public and they continue to come in and to have this kind of support and people sharing their own stories of loss and going through it and reading Mac’s story and listening to his music and what listening to his music was doing for them.

That was, all of that has been so helpful to us in our loss. I mean, to lose a son is, it’s, you know, it’s the hardest thing that I’ve had some hard things in life, but to watch our son go through that and to lose him in the end was the most difficult thing in life.

But also, like I said, the blessings that we’ve had, you know, with his music and for sure, you know, and now I’ve got a third record going. I found even more of Mac’s stuff.

THEO VON: Let’s go.

Mac’s Musical Legacy

It’s incredible. There’s a third record going. I just, he wrote so many things that he never thought would. I mean, you know how a musician will get an idea, they’ll kind of chunk it out, throw it onto a recorder, tuck it away over here, and then, you know, go on. And so I found all these things that he wrote and tucked away and we brought a whole bunch of those to life.

Orchestral music, jazz things, rock tunes. Something as big as, you know, him sitting down with his computer programs and doing big sweeping string orchestrations to him singing a melody into his phone that he didn’t want to forget that was in his head. And he sings this melody. And so I’ve taken those melodies, gone to my guys that work with me on it and said, let’s bring these melodies to life.

And so many of Mac’s melodies are coming to life now in the third record. It’s really, it’s spectacular. It’s beautiful. And all the proceeds will go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help our mission. He loved our mission at the Gary Sinise Foundation.

THEO VON: Well, it’s just so amazing that he got in there and was able to just feel the joy of being a part of serving others. If you get a chance.

GARY SINISE: Play some of that.

THEO VON: Oh, I would love to.

GARY SINISE: It’s good stuff. I’m going to play really amazing music.

THEO VON: I want to listen to something in just a second here. Was there, do you feel like there was a way that he tried to prepare you for him passing, or what is that like? Is that a strange question?

Preparing for the End

GARY SINISE: No, no, it’s not. You know, what he was preparing? He knew he had an incurable cancer and every drug we were trying wasn’t working. And he tried like 25 different drugs during a four and a half year period.

THEO VON: Was there plant medicines and stuff you tried to even?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, I mean, at one point he was doing sea cucumbers from New Zealand that were showing some positive signs, like on an immunotherapy side. And we had a very good oncologist who was, we never got to that point where they said, we don’t know what to do. We don’t have any ideas.

Our oncologist was like, “Mac, as long as you want to keep trying, then I’ll keep looking for something to try.” And he did, and he kept trying to find something. And unfortunately, we’d get to a certain point with one drug and we didn’t see enough results, so you bang into the next one. And we had a lot of drugs go through Mac at a certain point, and it was very challenging to fight that.

But I never saw him not want to do it. Later on, I found videos that he made. And when I say he was trying, he was preparing himself, he was also leaving some things for the family. And he wrote some things that I found, and he left messages.

And at one point in 2022, he had to go in for very serious, he was having a very serious bladder issue. His bladder was just shutting down, and he had to have tubes put in his kidneys to drain the urine directly out of his kidneys. And he was in the ICU for about 12 days. And at that point, he thought this, he was wondering if that was going to be it, the end.

So he started thinking, and he started writing, and he started leaving videos, and he started preparing. And then after he died, I started finding all this stuff, messages from him, things that he was thinking and not to be sad, but “I want to leave something.” And he was saying, “I want to leave something so people will know me a little better.”

And he was thinking ahead to the time where he might not make it. And with everything that was happening to him, he was realistic. He was very realistic about the fight and the uphill battle that we had, and we weren’t seeing enough progress on the positive side to combat the cancer. So he was preparing in a lot of ways.

And I’ve discovered a lot of things, and I’ve discovered more about my son than I could have imagined. Just his talent, his wisdom, his spirituality, a lot of beautiful things that, because I’ve spent countless hours all the time digging into things about my son, and I’m working on something that will come out next year about him.

And so I’m spending a lot of time and Mac is, he continues to help me, and we share. My band plays two songs that he wrote. Yeah, two songs. We’re playing at the Opry next week, and Mac’s going to have his Opry debut.

THEO VON: Let’s go.

GARY SINISE: With two of his songs.

Mac’s Character and Faith

THEO VON: He sounds like such a gift. That’s what he sounds like. Was he always like that, even when he was small, like when he was a child?

GARY SINISE: Yeah, he was a kid like other kids, but he was, Mac was always very sensitive. His mom, I think he’s got this sensitive beauty that his mother has, and she gave him a lot of that. And at one point, he went off to college, and he kind of was doing the college thing, kind of went through a period where he’s a little strayed.

But then he came back to his faith in a really big way when he had a couple years out of college. He was looking for something more than what he had, and that’s when he started kind of revisiting his faith.

And I’ll tell you, the fact that he kind of reinvested in that in 2017 in such a profound way, that was so meaningful to him. The fact that he did that when he did was a gigantic benefit to his fight, because the following year, he’s diagnosed with this terrible cancer.

THEO VON: Has something inside to help support him.

GARY SINISE: Yeah. And the timing couldn’t have been better for that, for him to have that strength, and he always relied on that throughout the fight.

THEO VON: Were you so proud of him?

GARY SINISE: Yeah. Could not be prouder of anyone. I’m proud of my kids. And our daughters are amazing. And through the whole thing, we’re all heartbroken, of course, but our daughters were amazing through it all and loved their brothers so much. And that’s the three of them right there.

Mac’s Sisters and Family

THEO VON: Tell me about Mac’s sisters, if you have a minute.

GARY SINISE: Well, there’s the one picture there where they’re looking back at the camera. That’s cute. That’s my daughter Sophie on the right. And then Mac in the middle, and then Ella, the youngest. Ella’s pregnant with her third child right now.

THEO VON: Let’s go, Ella. Somebody’s knocking her up, huh?

GARY SINISE: Okay.

THEO VON: Sorry.

GARY SINISE: But yeah, we know how it happens. That’s terrible.

THEO VON: I’m just trying to make you laugh. I’m just trying to make you laugh.

GARY SINISE: And Sophie on the right, she’s got three kids, so a big family. Mac loved his little nieces. My wife is amazing. That’s her on the right there with Mac. We all have a very close relationship, and we all have helped each other through this very difficult time. No question about it.

THEO VON: Just the value of family, of having people.

Processing Grief Together

GARY SINISE: In the beginning, when you’re going through a loss like that, I mean, we’ve all been through terrible loss, but this particular thing, in the beginning, you’re all exactly in the same place at the same time. You’re all crying every day, all the time.

And then as time goes on, you start to manage your grief a little bit more. Just manage those moments. The moments sneak up on you and stuff like that. And sometimes they’ll hit me, and all of a sudden, I’m in a very emotional place, and my wife will just put her hand on my shoulder.

Whereas in the beginning she’d start crying herself or my daughter started crying, we’d all be crying at the same time. And you kind of help each other through those moments. You just know, okay, Dad’s having a moment here with Mac. We just have to help them through. And so you learn to process your grief a little better.

And the thing I would say to anybody is those beautiful memories that you have of somebody that you miss like that and that you’ve lost, those are the things that sustain you, and you have to hang on to them.

Mac, I know Mac doesn’t want me to grieve and be sad and depressed all day long and miss him all day long. He wants us to go on and live. And anybody that we love, that we lose, that’s what they, they don’t want us sitting around wasting a minute of time, just not making the most out of the life that we have.

And that’s what we do to kind of celebrate and honor those that we’ve lost. We live on for them. And I know that Mac is proud of me and what I’m doing with his music. He’s probably a little freaked out about it because I’m so obsessed with it, but he’s also like, “Dad, you took that little idea and turned it into something.”

I know. And sure, Oliver. I brought Oliver Schnee back on, and Oliver’s producing the sound record.

THEO VON: Let’s go. Thank you, Oliver.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, Oliver’s doing a tremendous job with arranging certain things. My keyboard player, Ben Lewis, has taken a bunch of the piano music that I found that Mac did and woven these things together, these beautiful melodies that Mac created.

My violin player, Dan Myers, who worked with Mac on a song called “Quasi Love” that’s on the second record. It’s a rockin’ tune. The last song that Mac wrote, he wrote it with Dan. Dan is working on three different songs right now. They all came out of Mac’s files.

So we are doing something pretty cool. And I think Mac has probably just kind of been shocked a bit in shock that we’re going so crazy with it all.

The Power of Love

THEO VON: Oh, well, it’s like, yeah, in the end, it’s like the, like, it’s just, how much can we try and love? Right? How much can we try and love? How much can we try to be there, to fill in the gaps of the world, of the parts that are tough? How much can we be there for each other? Those are the things that mean something. Yeah, they really are. And it’s the truest thing.

GARY SINISE: And parents, we just, spending time with your kids and loving on your kids and all of that, that’s precious. It’s precious stuff, loving on our loved ones and making sure that they know that we do, that’s precious because none of us know.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. Especially how you even touch somebody or hold somebody. It was like most of my life I just wanted my dad to put his hand on the back of my neck.

GARY SINISE: Yeah. Give you a pat. Yeah.

THEO VON: Or just to hold me like that. It’s like a very familial type of thing. There’s things you, yeah. We just want to feel connected. We want to feel cared about.

And yeah, I thank you and Mac for creating such an environment that continues to just nurture and inspire that in the world. Not in an egotistical way, but in a way of just, hey, we feel like this is important, so come and join us on this journey of being there to give out a meal, to give out a hug, to watch a family smile when they get to walk into Disney World with pins of their dad or their mother on their chest and feel like they’re not alone or they’re not forgotten about.

Honoring Mac’s Legacy Through Music

GARY SINISE: That’s exactly right. And I know with regards to Mac, he loved the foundation so much. He loved the people that we serve. He wrote a great patriotic anthem called “The Rise.” It’s really an incredible piece of music.

And he wrote it for the foundation after he started going on these trips with World War II veterans, young people, parents, young students, like a 16 or 17 year old with a 95 year old World War II veteran who survived Iwo Jima or something like that. And they get to learn from them and Mac learned from them and he was inspired by them.

And now we have his music to share with them. You know what, can I mention this for sure? Last May, both “Resurrection and Revival” and “Resurrection and Revival Part 2” were among the top 10 most downloaded records in America on iTunes. And this is like Blake Shelton, Morgan Wallen, all these guys are on the top 10. And there’s Mac Sinise with two records.

And Forbes, a writer with Forbes, saw that and was like, “Who’s Mac Sinise? What is it?” And so he wrote a story on it on how these records were among the most downloaded records in America on iTunes. So the music is getting out there. The music is being shared. The music is helping the Gary Sinise Foundation.

We have more music coming. We want to continue to inspire people and sharing the story of Mac and the foundation is something that I can do all day long because it’s a lot of beautiful work.

The Power of Service

THEO VON: Oh, well, just the beauty that went into it, the life that went into it, and the fact that Mac’s life has been, it is now in it. It’s like it’s in it. It’s giving your life to making something that’s not just of you.

Like you were saying, like getting out of yourself. I know when I’m not feeling good, it’s like I got to go do something for somebody else or I need to call somebody else and ask them how they’re doing. The only solution to me is you. That’s really the truth for me, anyway.

GARY SINISE: That’s true. That’s a big.

THEO VON: And on the way out today, we will play a couple of Mac’s tunes. We’ll keep, we’ll just go to our screen card of the episode and we’ll play “Arctic Circles” and we’ll play, maybe we play that, the veterans anthem. What is that one called?

GARY SINISE: It’s called “The Rise.” Yeah, that’s on the YouTube channel as well.

THEO VON: Okay.

GARY SINISE: Yeah.

THEO VON: So maybe we can play the very patriotic song. Is it good? Well, that’s perfect for Veterans Day.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, absolutely.

Gratitude and Future Plans

THEO VON: And yeah, Gary, we want to double our donation, too, to you guys. Sorry for being cheap earlier and.

GARY SINISE: Thank you.

THEO VON: But yeah, on behalf of our podcast and the people that listen and just thank you so much for your work and for just coming and spending time with us today and for letting us spend time with Mac’s life. I can even feel him smiling. Dude, I don’t even know him, but I can feel it. And thanks, it’s just so special.

GARY SINISE: I’ll come back when we got part three. We can listen to that one.

THEO VON: Okay. We can sit here and listen to it sometime, too, if we want.

GARY SINISE: Awesome, bud.

THEO VON: We don’t have to talk a bunch. Tell your wife thank you so much for being supportive of you. And I don’t know what she does with the organization. She may do a ton, but just tell her thank you so much for being a supporter as well, because I know sometimes there’s always an amazing woman behind the name sometimes and stuff.

GARY SINISE: Yeah, I’ve got a great family supporting us, both our sons-in-law. We got lucky and we’re just, we’re very blessed in a lot of ways.

THEO VON: Gary Sinise, thank you so much, brother. Happy Veterans Day to you. And yeah, let me know when I can come in and help out next year.

GARY SINISE: I will, bud. Okay, good. Thank you.

THEO VON: Thank you.

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