#623 - Gary Sinise

Gary Sinise is an actor, activist and philanthropist known for his work helping veterans, first responders and their families. Gary joins Theo to talk about what he’s learned from service men and women over decades of working with them, why he thinks the story of Lt. Dan is a hopeful one, and how his late son Mac is leaving a legacy of his own. Gary Sinise: https://www.instagram.com/garysiniseofficial/ The Gary Sinise Foundation: https://www.garysinisefoundation.org/ Outro music: “The Rise” by Mac Sinise https://www.youtube.com/@macsinise7489 ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Acorns: Go to https://acorns.com/THEO to get your $20 bonus investment today! Terms and conditions apply. Good Ranchers: Head to https://go.goodranchers.com/theo and use my code THEO - all new subscribers get $100 off your first 3 orders with my code + free meat for LIFE when you subscribe. Landman: Don't miss Landman Season 2, streaming on Paramount+ November 16. Ship Station: Upgrade to ShipStation today to get a sixty-day free trial at https://www.shipstation.com/theo Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo and download their new web browser Comet at https://comet.perplexity.ai/ ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.

• 0:30Theo Von?

  Today's guest is an actor. He's a musician and he's an activist. You know him for some of his famous roles like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. And Mac Taylor in CSI New York. But he's also known for his work helping veterans and first responders. I had a great chat today. With the one and only Mr. Gary Sinise.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:11Theo Von?

  Yeah, thanks so much for coming in. Yeah, so you bought, you bought in Nashville in?

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Well, we bought in 21 and then we moved in 23.

• 1:20Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  So we, we had to do some renovating for our son and his, what was going on with him and everything like that. But then we finally, I moved my foundation in 22 and then we moved out in 23.

• 1:32Theo Von?

  And overall, has it been, has it been a good experience?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Fantastic, yeah. I got no, I was in Hollywood for 35 years.

• 1:40Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  That's enough.

• 1:41Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's a lot of service, man. You did, you kind of like, you did, you did your service.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was good, you know, we raised our kids there and everything.

• 1:50Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. Um, Gary Sinise, thanks for joining me, man.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Oh, it's great to be with you, bud.

• 1:56Theo Von?

  I appreciate it. And the Lieutenant Dan Band, you guys are performing at the Ryman Auditorium on Veterans Day?

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah, yeah, at the Opry, yeah.

• 2:05Theo Von?

  Sorry, you guys are performing at the Grand Ole Opry?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07Theo Von?

  On Veterans Day. Oh, that's gonna be sick. There's more seats there too, which is even better.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  It's, I think it's 4,000 something seats in there, you know? We played there, um, summer of 24. They did a really fun thing. They wanted, uh, 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 a Opry celebrates 30 years of Forrest Gump and and we went and we played and and we had a bunch of people on the bill and yeah, there we are. Did you guys play any songs from the movie? It well, everybody did. That's that's what was cool about the night is we had Gary LaVox from Rascal Flatts. He was on the bill. Jamie Johnson.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Jamie Johnson's the best. Yeah, Jamie and he'll be there on Tuesday when we play. The bill this the Tuesday is great and then when we did the 30th anniversary 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. We all did. What a fun night. It was really fun. Does the band rehearse a lot?

• 3:23Speaker 02

  You know, we I mean, this I've been doing it with this band for over 20 years. So we you know, we will rehearse once or twice a year. Yeah. 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 wind up a song, a new sound song, but we've played, you know, we play a lot of the same songs for because my band is 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. That's I don't

• 4:05Speaker 02

  play for money. This is what I do for for a mission. It's a service mission. I have to I have to pay the band. I have to pay the production costs of the staging. Of course, and that's so pricey. People don't realize it. There's you know, there's costs with affixed with that. And we have a big band. I mean, if you look at my band, there's, you know, there's me plus 12. So there's 13 of us. It's not cheap. Yeah, it's it's an expensive show, but it's a good show. We play a lot of a lot of good songs. Were you always a musician? Well.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Back in fourth grade, I got my first guitar. And this is, this goes back to the sixties, so uh, Beach Boys were my band. And I started listening to them a lot and trying to play their songs and then.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  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 twenties 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 like the late nineties, I started picking it up again and. Now we've, you know, formed a band and started going on military bases and. Overseas, we've done over six hundred something shows for the military.

• 5:23Theo Von?

  Wow. That's incredible, man. Thank you so much for uh, for your service, uh, for supporting the people who serve.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  You bet.

• 5:33Theo Von?

  I uh, yeah, whenever I was first starting out in comedy, we would do a bunch of like um. Kind of USO affiliated kind of tours where you would go and uh. 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 like. Like little like Ford operate like Aerif John, we went to one time.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  I've been there.

• 5:53Theo Von?

  We went to the Azores.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 5:56Theo Von?

  We went to like.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 5:58Theo Von?

  Places in Spain, just places you don't even think that there's bases and there's, there's people there.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  You know what there, we have, how many bases do you think there are that the US has in the world?

• 6:11Theo Von?

  I mean, I couldn't even guess, I don't think.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's about eight hundred bases. And the, the, the big giant ones, you know, like Fort Bragg or something like that, uh, two very, very tiny ones. In little remote areas like you, like you said, and a lot of them don't get. A lot of support or entertainment and that kind of thing. It's, it's, I think it's seven hundred and fifty, eight hundred bases, something like that. What's that say?

• 6:35Theo Von?

  Yeah, it says.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Seven hundred and fifty, yeah, to eight hundred seventy seven US military bases. Yeah, that's a lot of bases. My, when I started out with this, my goal was to hit every single one of them. And then I realized, well, I, I think I'm about a twenty five percent the way there. I think I've played about two hundred bases.

• 6:53Theo Von?

  Wow, that's cool. Oh, there's something about like, like I went to Qatar a couple of months ago.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 7:00Theo Von?

  The president was doing something there and they invited me to come. And, and so it was just like, but you get there and the.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Were you on that big Middle East tour that?

• 7:11Theo Von?

  I wasn't on the whole thing. I was just on Qatar and it was like a last minute thing. I was literally.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Central Command, yeah.

• 7:17Theo Von?

  Yeah. And they're like, do you want to come? You have to get on a plane in like five hours. And I was like.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah.

• 7:24Theo Von?

  And dude, but even the best part of it was when you walk up, there's all these soldiers like in line because they're like, I don't know if it was mandatory that they go to this event, but I think a lot of them wanted to too. It was probably like a fun thing to do on the base that day.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Yeah. Anything to break up the day. That's for sure.

• 7:38Theo Von?

  And, and just to walk up and a lot of them were like, hey, what's up? And just like that moment alone, like not for me, but for both of us, kind of just like that I got to be, it was just awesome, man. That's what it's like. Yeah, it was just awesome. And then, um, yeah, you see guys like who are away from their families. And then you have friends who, uh, their 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 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.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  It's kind of, it's kind of like.

• 8:24Theo Von?

  Kind of what happened or is that, but that?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I have Vietnam veterans in my family. I was playing a Vietnam veteran, Lieutenant Dan, and.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  So prior to playing him, I was like keyed up and tuned up to that because with Vietnam Veterans in 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.

• 8:51Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  In nineteen seventy-three. 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

• 9:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:45Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  And this was an organization that at that time represented one point five million wounded veterans going back to World War II, all the way up to the Gulf War. This, cause this is nine, ninety-four. And I walk out on this 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. He's standing on crutches there. And I looked out into the audience and I saw two thousand wounded veterans out there in the, in the crowd.

• 10:24Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  And it was very, very moving. I mean, it really-

• 10:28Theo Von?

  I can feel it right now, it's moving to me to even imagine that somebody saw that.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:43Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was there. I met a lot of interesting people o- over the years. I started going on USO tours in 2003. I started going to the bases. Uh, Qatar was one of, one of the first bases I went to on my first overseas US tour.

• 10:59Theo Von?

  Really?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:01Theo Von?

  It's a beautiful base.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were, we were there. We were in, um, uh, Iraq. We were in Kuwait. Uh, that was a, that was a big tour that Kid Rock was on and Lee Ann Womack was on that tour.

• 11:16Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  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, first trip.

• 11:33Theo Von?

  That's amazing.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Overseas to, to Iraq and Kuwait. Uh, this is me going out to a place called Camp Udari, which was right on the 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, uh, 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 a show.

• 12:15Theo Von?

  Sure, yeah. Bob's been in here. Bob's ridiculous. He lives across town. He's one of, he's one of a kind.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Good, good, good, good guy. We've known each other since that.

• 12:23Theo Von?

  Oh, you have?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  That trip.

• 12:24Theo Von?

  He's got a big heart, dude. He's a, uh, yeah, he's a.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Loves our military, really.

• 12:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:30Theo Von?

  We spent a good bit of time together. He's a special guy. What, what's something, um, yeah, cause you just had, like, you, you had so many, like, kind of iconic roles, like, um, you know, and were in so many, like, just, you know, films that really touched people, um, you know, The Green Mile, I remember, of mice and men. That's crazy dude.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Did you see that in high school?

• 12:52Theo 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?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  You can't have a dog.

• 13:06Theo Von?

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

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I never thought of that.

• 13:13Theo Von?

  Oh dude, it was, yeah, it took like a month to get them back for some of us.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  That's hilarious.

• 13:18Theo Von?

  But that, just so many special roles, but then it feels like you really kind of found this, like a role that really like, 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, you know?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  With the veterans in my family and especially the Vietnam veterans, I have, 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, 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 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, Iraq and

• 14:22Speaker 02

  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, 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 could. And that led to all these nonprofits that I supported and then I just started my own.

• 14:59Theo Von?

  And that's the Gary Sinise Foundation?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Theo Von?

  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?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  You're, you're, you're absolutely right.

• 15:29Theo 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, or do you, like, is that, does that make any sense, that question?

• 15:40Speaker 02

  I didn't care about that stuff. All, what I did care about was them feeling, uh, kind of a, 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.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  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, 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

• 17:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Into their world, which was, you know, pretty difficult time. I mean, if you're over there and you lose ten buddies and then you lose your legs, you've got, you've got a long way, 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.

• 17:52Theo Von?

  Yeah, you were right, you know.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  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 gotta go.

• 18:09Theo Von?

  Right.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  So they're just doing their duty. And I wanna, I wanna support them and help them through the difficulties of going to war and, and the things that they see and the things that happened to them.

• 18:23Theo Von?

  I remember one time on a base, we were there and something, I think it was in Air of John, one of those bases near there, like, uh, and there was, everybody was in the hospital, someone, something had happened, something had come into the base and somebody gotten, uh, taken shrapnel or something and they were losing a lot of blood. And they basically had this hallway lined up in this hospital of like people literally going through and donating blood. It was like, I mean, there may have been a hundred 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? Like, I'm not one of them, you know, I'm,

• 19:06Theo Von?

  I'm one of them in the sense that I'm an American and I have like, I have like empathy, maybe something, there's something there, like a human connection. Uh, but man, that was like heartbreaking. Uh, and so you were just kind of passing out waters and shaking hands and just like, you know, 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.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  But you were there.

• 19:31Theo Von?

  Right.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  They had, they had to be there. You did not.

• 19:35Theo Von?

  Right.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  And so that was, 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, a water bottle, to tell some jokes, uh, to break up their day a little bit, help them through that experience. That was, I'm sure that was profoundly impactful for you, but it was also very meaningful for, for them. I've seen it, uh, you know, hundreds of times.

• 19:58Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  And it's, it's helpful, you know, to have somebody from home show up and say, hey, thanks for what you're doing.

• 20:06Theo Von?

  Um, and it was, and the next day they found out that the guy didn't make it, you know? And it was just like, uh, it was, it was, uh, ha- 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, are there, have you been on bases where it's a night where it's like, man, this is a, a lot's happened today and it might be a tough night for these guys to come and enjoy some music? Like, or, or what are some of the, like, what are some of the things we don't see that, right, of, uh, as regular civilians? Of what base life is like?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  You know, when it, when you go to, when you go to a war zone,

• 20:43Speaker 02

  um,

• 20:45Speaker 02

  you're, you, you're keen, 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, 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, that's happened to me multiple times where

• 21:11Speaker 02

  I'll be taking pictures with a thousand people or something like that. And I know that, you know, I mean, 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.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Of me and their son, who was, he was killed the next day.

• 21:35Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  You know, after, not like this is the last picture that was taken. Uh, and you know, 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, and those types of things can, uh, impact you in a very profound, uh, way.

• 21:56Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  And you don't, you don't forget about that.

• 21:59Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  You know, and it makes you come back and do it again, you know? Uh, I, I thought the first time I went to a hospital, um, I would, I remember. It's well over 20 years ago and I went to Landstuhl Medical Center in, in, uh, Germany.

• 22:15Theo Von?

  Landstuhl?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  It's called Landstuhl, yeah.

• 22:17Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  And it's where, you know, our service members, if they get hurt.

• 22:24Theo Von?

  It's the first place they go, right?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  They will go to Germany, they get stabilized and then they come home when, when they're okay to be transferred. Um, 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.

• 22:49Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  And that, that was very, I was very nervous about it. Uh, I mean, I remember the first time it was kind of, I tell this story about, you know, 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 the, 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 gonna, I don't know how I'm gonna get through it, you know?

• 23:33Speaker 02

  I, uh, I'm ner-, I'm nervous. I'm feeling kind of nervous in my stomach.

• 23:38Theo Von?

  And if one of them opens their eyes and like, holy shit, Lieutenant Dan, like I'm in heaven, like where am I?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Or they're hallucinating, you know, they're on so much medication, they, they think they're nuts. And I walked in.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  And I, I, I tell this story about walking into the first room and there were like thirty people in there and they were all banged up, but they were gonna get patched up and sent back to the war zone. They weren't injuries that would send them home. And everything was quiet and I'm, you know, I, I wore glasses at the time. I had the 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

• 24:34Speaker 02

  and people that were in traumatic brain injuries and just really awful stuff. But when I left there, I felt, I felt like really good that I had done something positive. Like purposeful? Yeah, that, you know, when I went there, it was, I was, it was all, all about me and what I was thinking about how I'm gonna react to it. And when I left, it was, I realized, no, it's, 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 wanna go back. Two weeks later, I was at Walter

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Reed. And then I was at another hospital, Naval Medical Center at, 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, in the, 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, and it helps you get through the, the difficult moments where

• 25:57Speaker 02

  some, you, you meet somebody that's really been through some really bad stuff. But I'm just there to help them through. So you learn, you kind of learn. You know, how it's, it's not about you at all. It's about them and what you want them to, to get out of you, giving them a hug, or patting them on the back, or telling them you, you appreciate them. And that's, that's rewarding. That's, that gives life great purpose to be able to take something. You know, 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, you know? Yeah, he wasn't a character that just kind of ended right there.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Like, he wasn't a character who just had this, you know what I'm saying? Like, it was... Yeah. No, it wasn't. I, I realized at a certain point,

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Lieutenant Dan's just gonna, that's, he's just a part of, 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 at the end, and so... Yeah, what did he, at the end, did he own a car wash or something? What did he do for a living at the end? No, he's a shrimp guy. Oh, yeah. He bought the boat. He's a shrimp guy. He makes a bunch of... Yeah, they make a bunch of money on, 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,

• 27:33Speaker 02

  you know, he's doing well. You look at him. He's, he's married at the end. He's standing up on prosthetic legs, and it's, it's a happy ending. And you, you pull for a guy like that in a movie, and you, you want him to be okay. And so many of the other movies that came out, you know, in the late seventies, early eighties, 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 gonna be okay, and something bad was gonna happen to him. And with Forrest Gump, it was different. It was a, a new look at a Vietnam veteran who came home from war, processed everything, and then moved on.

• 28:16Theo 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. Good Ranchers is unique compared to other meat companies, as all of their meat is born, raised, and harvested here in the USA. I was shocked when I learned that over 85% of beef in the grocery store was from overseas. Good Ranchers is all about transparency and supporting local farms and ranches, and that's why I'm a subscriber. Plus, their meat is top-quality: steaks, chicken, pork, you name it, they do it. Right now, if you go to GoodRanchers.com and use my code Theo, all new subscribers

• 29:00Theo Von?

  will get $100 off their first three orders. You also get to pick which of their best-selling cuts you want free in every order for life. That's free chicken breasts, free Wagyu burgers, or free bacon in every order for life. Once again, use code Theo for $100 off plus free meat for life for all new subscribers. Seriously, that's Good Ranchers' best offer ever, but you have to order by December 1st, and I cannot speak highly enough of this company. Streaming November 16th on Paramount+, it's The Return of Landman, TV's biggest phenomenon. From Taylor Sheridan, co-creator of Yellowstone, Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton is

• 29:44Theo Von?

  back as Tommy Norris and managing higher stakes than ever before. Featuring an all-star cast including Academy Award nominees Demi Moore, Andy Garcia, and Sam Elliott. In the wake of his former boss's passing, tensions come to a head as Tommy and Demi Moore's Cammy Miller struggle to maintain control of MTech's oil. And with his father, played by Sam Elliott, coming back into his life, Tommy must juggle both his roles as an oil man and a family man, as pressure builds and his worlds collide. Don't miss the hit series everyone is talking about, Landman. New season streaming November 16th, only on Paramount+.

• 30:31Theo Von?

  We just had, uh, 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 gonna come on. When I first started this, my mom, um, she's had two husbands that served and, uh, that passed away, but, um, 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, but...

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Please give your mom a hug for me.

• 30:58Theo Von?

  Oh, you bet.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 31:00Theo Von?

  I will give her one. Um, we started hugging finally about a year ago, so...

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Well, give her two.

• 31:06Theo Von?

  It's been a long road, but I'll get, I'll make sure to.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  That's another podcast you can tell me about.

• 31:11Theo Von?

  Uh, Miles Teller was on and he was talking about just working with servicemen and, um, and he was talking about, uh, just his experience. He had a film called, um, "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, uh, 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, like, uh, what do you think that, uh, 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, having had a lot of experience?

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Well, Miles, Miles has a point about that. And we learned a lot during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. I mean, the, the military, the various branches of the military did start to address that. We need to be, 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 for, 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 and a number of programs to address that, coming home, transitioning, uh, from the battlefield to, to home, coming back to your family.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  There was a movie that, uh, I was involved in that I was executive producer on, um, 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. Um, this was a buddy of mine who had two brothers that were serving in Iraq. And he, he wasn't serving, but he embedded with units over in Iraq and he made a documentary. His name's Jake Radamacher and Jake's a buddy of mine. Uh, I ended up being an executive producer on this film.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  And then recently we decided because there's so many people in the movie, uh, 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, uh, 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, 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.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Cause 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, 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, uh, 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. The Radamachers? The Radamachers, yeah, two brothers. Thank you for your service.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  So you meet them and it's a beautiful documentary. I mean, both, both of them are very beautiful and we use these movies to help our veterans. We use the first movie, Jake has done hundreds of workshops on military bases, showing the movie and they hands out workbooks to everybody and says, what, 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. Yeah. Right? They they compartmentalize, they keep it in.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  And sometimes it explodes in a very bad and damaging way. And we don't want that to happen. We don't want, 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. Hmm. And and they really are helpful. Jake is now doing workshops with Brothers After War. Let's go. So Brothers At War and Brothers After War. Yeah, very, very positive movies. Uh, Brothers After War was totally funded by the Gary Sinise Foundation and thankfully our donors, you know, allow me to do a lot of great things.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  And for our donors, they should know that that that this movie is making a difference in people's lives. We are helping veterans. That's Jake doing a workshop there uh for Brothers After War. Uh, we're, you know, 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 we've sent hundreds of veterans to these retreats. It can be very, very positive. Cause so many of these people come home and then they isolate.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  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 of them. And it was, it was not good. And we don't want that to happen to anybody who's serving our country. So we provide a lot of. Programs and initiatives of Gary Sine's foundation to help them through that.

• 37:21Theo Von?

  Well, we're gonna make a donation today, Gary, so thank you.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks so much.

• 37:25Theo Von?

  Yeah, we'll donate $10,000 today to just to support the foundation.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Holy cow.

• 37:29Theo 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? Like, and then do you think one part, one political party really does it better than the other? Like, 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.

• 38:00Speaker 02

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

• 38:16Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 38:17Speaker 02

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

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Is it, 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, 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, we'd have a real, serious problem.

• 39:22Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  But we have to work, we have to work together. And so, you know, the VA is just one of those large bureaucracies that we have. You know, it's, I mean, there's many, many VA hospitals around the country. There are a lot of hospitals that need. Upgrades, you know, because they've been around a long time and so we're, we're, we constantly have to reinvest in that within the government. My dad got help from the VA, you know, so that, that was good.

• 39:54Theo Von?

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

• 39:58Speaker 02

  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, 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, 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.

• 40:33Theo 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, like, we've had a lot of people come through, we've gotten to express things to them about different like laws and things that we would like to see changed. Is there anything to lawmakers that you would say, if there are any lawmakers listening, like, is there anything that you would say to them based on like your experiences that, that could be done or that could be different? Or is that too broad of a thing to even ask?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Democrats and Republicans serve our country, right? In military uniform. So, do we owe them, you know, or do we not? And if you're in government, I, I always believe we can never do enough for the men and women to serve our country. So, you know, let's make sure that they don't get caught in, in, you know, in some political game that's going on. You know, 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 member. They they're gonna serve no matter what, right?

• 41:45Theo Von?

  And the stress of that knowing the government's shut down, that has to feel weird for some of them, especially some of the older ones who are going to VA, like wondering if in a month they're still gonna be able to get if the place they're going to or that they're getting housing from is still gonna be avail. It could just be a fear, you know? The stress of so much of that is crazy.

• 42:01Speaker 02

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

• 42:07Theo Von?

  And that's a political kickball that they use, and it has real life, it has real life. What word am I looking for?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Consequences.

• 42:15Theo Von?

  Consequences. Thank you, sir.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  You're absolutely right.

• 42:18Theo 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 this 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.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  I know there are things going on. Let, for example, a lot of times when I want to go to a military base, right, and I have a foundation that provides uplifting events on military bases all across the country and overseas. And many times, if I, you know, I will 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

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Then I'll call up the, call up the general or the colonel and say, would you like us to come and lift up the base with a, with some entertainment and that kind of thing? And, you know, nine times out of 10 there, you know, if the date's available and, and they don't have something else going on, they'll want, they'll want me to come and, and we provide meals, we do all kinds of things like that on military bases all, 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, you know, we're kind of, we got a lot of people furloughed right now, so we can't make any decisions, but you know, we're hoping that, you know, this is gonna stop.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's all, this furlough stuff is already sort of slowing things down a bit. I mean, they'll, they'll get this sorted out, eventually, it's not gonna last forever and everything, but it is, you know, it is, uh, it is kind of a, a roadblock, you know, for them to just get on with things on the military base and, and continue serving our country. And part of what I do is just, I, everything in my foundation is all about, uh, the heartbeat of everything we do, I, 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.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  You know, and so, 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. Yeah. And I've found that my role as an entertainer and somebody who can interact with them on military bases and, you know, 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, 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, I tell people what I see, and I've met the, some of the most extraordinary people serving our country out there, just some of my best friends are in the military and, and, and I, I, from

• 45:40Speaker 02

  somebody who's missing three limbs or four limbs to, you know, some, some general who served his country for 42 years and is now retired. And when I met him, he was a major, you know, or something. Yeah. I mean, and you know, 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.

• 46:02Theo Von?

  Games and all that stuff. These are our defenders. Yeah. You know, where would we be if nobody wanted to do that? Well, if you had to sleep in fear too. I mean, the fact that we, so I mean, it's a little bit scary certainly in certain neighborhoods and different like places, but the fact if you had to sleep in complete fear, you know? Um, 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, uh, this serviceman when we were kids, I remember. I didn't even remember that until you just said that. Um, but yeah, the fact that some of these people- He did. Yeah. How old were you? I was probably six or seven. I think when I first could remember that I was praying, you know? But I was, I just remember that he would do that. But I think, uh,

• 46:47Theo Von?

  yeah, I think people used to have a different affinity for, um, maybe the military or some people did. I don't know. Uh, we had a different affinity as a country. I remember the pledge of allegiance was like the most important thing, you know? Do it every morning, yeah. Yeah, the fact that we were all together. It was one moment where it felt like we were all together for something. Yep. Um. Yeah, absolutely.

• 47:09Speaker 00

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• 47:40Theo Von?

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• 49:03Theo Von?

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• 50:11Theo 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?

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's a program for children of our fallen heroes.

• 50:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, tell me, I, there's a great photo, I think it was from this year that you put up. Oh, this is so great. Um, a thousand children of fallen soldiers to Disneyland. You guys all went?

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, we take, we take them, uh, I got involved with, and there, uh, 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, um, they contacted me to tell me about the event, and, and they wanted to do it again in 2007, and they asked me to get involved, and I, I did, and started attending the event, started donating my band. Um, American Airlines is a big supporter of that. They provide all the airfare, all the charter airplanes, they will, they'll provide 12 charters from all over the country to fly the kids

• 51:17Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  into this event. Uh,

• 51:19Theo Von?

  Thank you, American Airlines. That's amazing.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  American Airlines, and they've been doing it now, you know, going back to the beginning. And I got involved, you know, like, like I said, it's, it's almost 20 years, and we eventually moved it from Anaheim to Dallas, which is where American Airlines is based, they've, you know, and so we did the, 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.

• 51:55Theo Von?

  Oh, nice.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  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 gonna cost a lot more money. Yeah, that's the Candlelight Processional. Uh, I started in 2000.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  And I've done it many, many times. I'll be doing it again this year. When do you do it? I, uh, I used to do it right. Sometimes I do it on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Wow. And now I do it, uh, because we're bringing the kids there. We, uh, in 2018, we folded that organization, Snowball Express, into the Gary Sinise Foundation. Oh. Cause it was gonna cost a lot more money to move it to Disney World. So we, we had the ability to raise the additional money. Uh, so now we take the kids to Disney World. And so when, uh, we do two events, we do military kids. And we will have

• 52:53Speaker 02

  close to a thousand children who have lost a parent in military service. Plus, you know, the surviving spouse. Plus hundreds of volunteers. I mean, we take over an entire hotel at, uh, at Disney World, you know, 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, uh, you know, 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, 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

• 53:35Speaker 02

  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, 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 wanna just wrap our arms around these Amen. 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.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  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 you know, like I say, we probably have 2,000 people there.

• 54:34Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  You know, 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 you know, I'll, I'll, I'll always send them off on an airplane and you know, I show up at the airport. That's, that's what you were seeing there with me on the plane with the kids and all that.

• 54:55Theo Von?

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

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm in hundreds and hundreds of families, you know, and they're all going through some, some difficult loss, you know? And unfortunately, each year, there's a new family, you know? I mean, these are, these are, you know, we can't point to a war that's going on right now, but people are serving out there.

• 55:41Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, we lose people who take their own lives because this, they, they, 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, you know? This is, this is a family who's served and sacrificed for our country. We're all, we all benefit from

• 56:07Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  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, I have said this, that

• 56:18Speaker 02

  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, 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,

• 57:00Speaker 02

  this, yeah, this stuff that you hear about veterans falling through the cracks and all that stuff, and they're waiting in line for different things, and stuff, you know, all of that would be greatly reduced. All those problems. If we as citizens just recognize that, hey, there are people out there that, that protect us, they defend us, and I, I appreciate that. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna neglect, I'm not gonna take it for granted.

• 57:25Theo 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, or leave a card in their mailbox, or do, you know, I'm saying just little things like that. It's like, I'm even asking myself, it's like, you know, how can I be a part of even just my local community to help let people, 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?

• 58:01Speaker 02

  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, you know, you can create an organization, but there are small things that you can do too, you know. You can just pat somebody on the back and say, I appreciate you. You know, that's, that's it. That gesture, you know, 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 I see you. what they're doing, yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  That can, that can go a long way. That can change somebody's day in a big way, just those little tiny gestures. I remember, you know, the kinds of stuff you hear, hear about, and I, I made a, a practice of this. If I saw soldiers or something like that in a restaurant, I'd always like anonymously pick up their check. I mean, this goes, this goes along, you know, 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, you know, police departments, people like that.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Bring me to one of the things next year if you, if you do something. Yeah, sure. It's called, well, I know you live here now, so. Oh, yeah. Now I'm screwed. Now you're stuck. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna have to start learning how to march. You'll be serving some heroes with us. I would love to, Gary. That would mean, that would fill my heart up. That's it right there. Yeah. So that's me. Oh, yeah, I love macaroni. That's, yeah, that's macaroni and cheese or beans or whatever it is. We, you know, we always get great food and we, you know, we have multiple programs at the foundation. Now that little program there, just serving veterans at a VA or some, you know, military base or something like that, that little program can make a big difference, you know?

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Somebody like me comes out and dishes out hamburgers and beans and stuff and they call home and say, hey, guess, guess who gave me the beans today? Yeah. I mean, Lieutenant Dan is doing fine. Yeah, it could be. Lieutenant Dan dished out the beans. He's doing great, dude. But I've done it so many times and. No, I love it. You know, remember the Palisades burning down? Yeah. We were there a couple of weeks later. We were dishing out food.

• 1:00:38Theo Von?

  To the first responders?

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  To all the first responders, the National Guard people that were there. Serving hundreds of meals, just, you know, and that kind of stuff. They, they just saw a lot of bad stuff, you know? And those kinds, types of things can just help them through. Hey, I'm not doing this. Yeah, that's the Palisades here. Um, I'm not doing, that's Joe Montegna on my right there.

• 1:01:02Theo Von?

  Is it really?

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, Joe, and I'm my-

• 1:01:05Theo Von?

  Oh, from CSI?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  On my left right there, that's John Androsik, who, from Five for Fighting. And they're buddies of mine. They're both ambassadors for my foundation.

• 1:01:13Theo Von?

  I can't stand to fly. Is that them?

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, Superman, yeah. And they're, they're old buddies of mine. We've known each other a long time and I, I said, hey, we're, 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, you know.

• 1:01:30Theo Von?

  I used to go to AA meetings up there all the time. I go to some big AA meetings up there in Palisades.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  In the Palisades?

• 1:01:35Theo Von?

  Yeah, some, some pretty big ones. We'd go to them at the VA over there. They had a one over there on-

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  In Westwood?

• 1:01:41Theo Von?

  In Westwood, yeah. With that golf course in the back, that crazy place?

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:47Theo Von?

  That place seems like-

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  We've done a bunch of those serving heroes at, at the VA in Westwood.

• 1:01:51Theo Von?

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

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  I told you that some of the VAs need a little work, yeah.

• 1:01:59Theo Von?

  But it also has a really cool, old school feel in there. Um, but that's a, yeah, I've been over to that one a great deal just to, uh, 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. Um, yeah, yeah, please let me know if there's something I can do, if there's something I can be, help be a part of. Um, I'm, I'd love to. I think this is like even just the fact that you came here and are sharing this stuff with us, it's important to be reminded. Sometimes I just get, you get caught up in your own life so much. It's, you get, you forget about the things that are keeping your own-

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  We, we have thousands of donors that go to the Gary Sinead Foundation and help us do all this stuff.

• 1:02:35Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  You know, and I, I've been blessed because I've been, you know, I had a, you know, had good, good years in Hollywood and I've been able to take those resources and channel it into doing something good and then, you know, 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 and

• 1:03:00Theo Von?

  Oh, I just heard you guys are building, you're just building your 100th house or what did I hear?

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Uh, on Veterans Day, we give away our 99th home in Virginia. And then a couple of weeks, uh, just about nine days later, eight days later, we give away our 100th home.

• 1:03:16Theo Von?

  Let's go. And how do you get, how do these homes get built? That's wild.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  We have a great team of builders. These are all professionals, you know, we don't just get volunteers to hammer the nails and stuff. Uh, we get, we, we've had a team of very professional builders. They, you know, our, our work is not the only thing they do, but they're very, very good at, you know, building these homes. We come in, we rally the communities around the service member. Uh, we just had, uh, just, mm, just a few days ago, we just had one of our events here in Tennessee, uh, called Walls of Honor, which is about halfway through the home. You can see the frame up in this home.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  We will do something before the drywall goes in. We'll have the community and corporate sponsors and people that are part of our, uh, building. They will come and they'll write messages on the frame.

• 1:04:15Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

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

• 1:04:31Theo Von?

  So you're on the go a lot with these things. This is amazing. And this is so, and if people wanted to, if people do want to donate, they could just donate to Gary Sinise Foundation and it goes to all of these different things?

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Unless you want to designate it to something special or something like that, you can do that.

• 1:04:45Theo Von?

  And they can do it right on your website?

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, just garysinisefoundation.org. It helps us to do all the thing. And when I take my band out to a military base, uh, that's, you know, the, the band is a, 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.

• 1:05:11Theo Von?

  Wow, no, it's so great because sometimes you're like, what do I give to, what do I donate to? Especially these days, you hear of so many charities and you don't really know what's going on. And then like, 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.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:05:45Theo Von?

  Yeah, thank you, man, thank you so much.

• 1:05:49Theo Von?

  I know, um, you've had an interesting few years, your son got very sick in the past few years.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Theo Von?

  Mac, his name, what was his full name?

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Mac, yeah. First name is McCanna, and everybody called him, you know, we all called him Mac.

• 1:06:05Theo Von?

  Yeah. Oh, there he is, handsome guy. McCanna Anthony.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mac was, um, he, uh, started playing drums when he was nine years old. And he was, just took to it right away. Just an incredibly, he had just a natural talent. And played all the way through high school and...

• 1:06:29Theo Von?

  Look how proud he looks right there, he's pretending to look like that, like kind of austere, you know?

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Well...

• 1:06:34Theo Von?

  Is austere a word?

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. After, um, after music school, he went to USC Music School.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  And, and they went on tour, was touring around overseas and around the country with different bands and whatnot. He came to work for the Gary Siney's Foundation in 2017.

• 1:06:57Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  He just was kind of tired of the road and he was, I kept kind of bugging him a little bit, well, why don't you dip your toe in the water and 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, that's Mac and I on one of our, uh, trips where we took, uh, probably about 45 WWII veterans down to the National WWII Museum.

• 1:07:22Theo Von?

  In New Orleans?

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  In New Orleans.

• 1:07:23Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  And we take them with our, 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, uh, he was diagnosed with a very rare cancer called cordoma. It starts in the spine. And, um, he, he had his initial tumor removed in September of 2018, but

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  the cancer came back in May of 2019. He stayed working with for the foundation while he was going through treatment until the end of 2019, and then things got very, very hard for him. And, uh, you can see him there in a wheelchair. He, he was disabled by the cancer, couldn't walk anymore, couldn't play any music anymore. Wasn't thinking about music at all. Uh, for, for 2020, 2021, 22. In early 2023, 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, and, um,

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  people, you know, I, I didn't talk about this for six years while we were going through it. I just, we were just going through cancer and trying to fight it and hoping we would find some drugs that worked and we, Mac tried 25 different drugs during a four and a half year period and nothing worked. And it's a rare cancer. I mean, it's, 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 like,

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  I was so knocked out by that. I said, yes, that do it, do it. And so he teamed up with a couple of my band members who he knew. Mac, 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,

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  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. Oh, yeah. With a string section behind him. And you can see that video. You can see Arctic Circles and other videos at Max and Eze YouTube. And here's 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, a whole album. So along with his buddy Oliver Schnee,

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  composing buddy from, that's Oliver right there, from USC? USC, they went to work and Mac did an album called Resurrection and Revival. And he finished, the music was, was done and ready in December of 2023, two weeks before he died, he finished the record. And we, 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. Beautiful. Handsome young man. He was incredible. You, you can actually see right there on his nose. There's a, that's a tumor.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  And yeah, no, you can see his spirit right there. And we're listening, we're listening to one of the pieces played back to us right there. And everybody was psyched out about it.

• 1:11:49Theo 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. Like, I think our spirits are very much alive for a long time. And so, thank you for letting us-

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  Mac was a very faithful guy.

• 1:12:22Theo Von?

  Was he?

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

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

• 1:12:32Theo Von?

  What was something that amazed you about your son as you're watching him go through that?

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  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...

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  I remember when we found out he had a tumor. And the way he dealt with it was

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  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 gonna 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 like

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  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...

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  You know, I just stayed in the battle and uh and he 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 he was, if we could keep him out of pain, and if we could keep him, um, you know, 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, 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 net things almost, which is crazy. Well, it's a sling. It's a sling that you put under underneath them and then you hook

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  it to this arm and then you crank it up and it lifts them out of the bed. It's kind of cool. Almost like a stork. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what we had and we had to get used to all that kind of stuff. Wheelchair bands and treatment and, you know, radiation and, you know, he had multiple surgeries and, and he went through all of this, which 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, and all of that and, and his health was, you know, deteriorating. In some ways, that was one of the best years

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  of his entire life because he, 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, and then after he died, I found all this additional music in his files that he wrote and tucked away that. Some, some he'd written in for the foundation and I had heard it. But then I found all this other stuff. Oh. Going all the way back to his college days. And so I produced a second record. Resurrection and Revival Part Two.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  That's actually a story about resurrection and revival part two. Go back to that picture. I just want to see him. Oh, look how happy he is, huh? And that is, we blew up a bunch of pictures of Mac and put him in the studio when we were recording. And, uh, yeah, there they are. We, 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, uh, 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. How special, huh?

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  How special for your son to like, just to make it such a family mission, you know? You know what's cool too? You can see here, like all those messages right in the middle of the screen there. Those are, 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. The, these are from my bandmates and some of the people that worked for the foundation, but these are the messages

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  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. It's, you know, I mean, to lose a son is.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  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

• 1:18:25Theo Von?

  For sure.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  You know, and now I've got a, I've got a third record going. I found even more

• 1:18:30Theo Von?

  Of Mac stuff? Let's go.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  I mean, 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, 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.

• 1:19:17Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  And he sings this melody. And so I, I take those melodies, gone to my, 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, in the third record. It's really, it's spectacular. It's, 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.

• 1:19:42Theo Von?

  Well, it's just so amazing that he got in there and was able to just like, just feel the joy of being a part of, uh, serving others, you know?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you get a chance, play some, play some of that.

• 1:19:53Theo Von?

  Oh, I would love to.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  It's good stuff.

• 1:19:55Theo Von?

  I'm gonna play.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Really amazing music.

• 1:19:57Theo 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? Like, is that a strange question?

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  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,

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  Twenty five different drugs during a four and a half year period and we would.

• 1:20:29Theo Von?

  Was there plant medicines and stuff you tried to even?

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, there I mean, at one point he was doing. Sea cucumbers from New Zealand, you know, that were showing some positive signs like on an immunotherapy side. And we had a very good oncologist who was. We never.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  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, he kept trying to find something and.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  You know, unfortunately, we'd get to a certain point with one drug and we didn't see enough results. So you you bang into the next one and. You know, we had a lot of drugs go go through Mac at a certain point. And it was very.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  You know, very, very challenging, you know, to to to to fight that, but I never saw him. Not want to do it. Later on, I found.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Videos that he made.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  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 and he was in the ICU for about 12 days. And at that point, he thought.

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  This, you know, he, he was wondering if that was gonna be it.

• 1:22:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  You know, the end. So he started thinking and he started writing and he started leaving videos and he started preparing. And then I, after he died, I started finding all this stuff. Messages from him, things that he was thinking.

• 1:22:41Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  And not, you know, to be sad, you know.

• 1:22:45Theo Von?

  No.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  But I, I wanna leave something.

• 1:22:47Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  He was saying, I want to leave something that people, so people will know me a little better. And he was thinking ahead, you know, to the time where he might not make it. And, uh, you know, with everything that was happening to him, he was, he was realistic, you know. He was very realistic about the fight and the uphill battle that we had. And we weren't seeing enough progress, you know, on the positive side to combat the cancer. So he was preparing in, in a lot of ways. And, you know, like I said, I've discovered a lot of things and, and I've discovered more about my son

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  than I could have imagined, you know, just his talent, his wisdom, his spirituality. A lot of beautiful things that, uh, cause I've spent countless hours, you know, all the time digging into things about my son and I'm working on a, you know, something that will come out next year about him. And, you know, so I'm, I'm, I'm spending a lot of time and, and Mac is, he continues to help me. And, and we share, you know, my band plays two songs and, uh.

• 1:24:02Theo Von?

  That he wrote?

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  And, yeah, two songs. Yeah. We're playing at the Opry next week and Mac's gonna have his Opry debut.

• 1:24:09Theo Von?

  Let's go.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Oh, with two of his songs.

• 1:24:11Theo 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?

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, he was a kid, you know, like, like other kids. But he was, Mac was a very, always very sensitive. His mom, I think he's, he's got this sense, sensitive beauty that his mother has. And she gave him a lot of that. And, um.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  And at one point, he went off to college and he kind of, you know, was doing the college thing, kind of went through a period, you know, where he's a little straight, but then he came back to his faith in a really big way. You know, when he, you know, a couple of years out of college, he was, he was looking for something more than what he had. And that's why, that's when he started kind of revisiting his faith. And I'll tell you, the fact that he kind of reinvested in, in that in 2017 in such a profound way that was so meaningful to him.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:25:36Theo Von?

  And he has something inside to help support him.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and the timing couldn't have been better for that, you know, for him to have that strength. And he always relied on that throughout the fight.

• 1:25:47Theo Von?

  Were you so proud of him?

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Could not be prouder of anyone. I'm proud of my kids and my, our daughters are amazing and, you know, 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, that's the three of them right there.

• 1:26:26Theo Von?

  Yeah. Tell me about Mac's sisters if you haven't, if you haven't made it.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, there's the one picture there.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  Where they're looking back at the camera. Yeah, that's cute. That's my daughter Sophie on the right and then Mac in the middle and then, yeah, that one there. And then Ella, the youngest. Ella's pregnant with her third child right now. Let's go Ella. Somebody's knocking her up, huh?

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  Sorry. But, yeah. We know how it happens.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  That's terrible. That's terrible. I'm just trying to make you laugh. I'm just trying to make you laugh. Sophie on the right, she's got three kids, so. Oh, you got a big family. Mac loved his, his little nieces. Uh, my wife is amazing. That's her on the right there with, with Mac.

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  Uh, they, we all have a very close relationship and, uh, we all have helped each other through, um, you know, this, this very difficult time. Uh, no question about it. Just the value of family of having people, you know? You know, in the beginning, when you're going through a loss like that, I mean, we've all been through terrible loss. But, but this particular thing, in the beginning, you're all, you're all exactly in the same place at the same time. You're all crying every day, all the time and, and then as time goes on, you start to manage your grief a little bit more.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  Um, just manage those moments, the moments come, sneak up on you and stuff like that. And sometimes they'll hit me and, you know, all of a sudden I'm in a very emotional place and, you know, my wife will just put her hand on my shoulder, you know, whereas in the beginning, she'd start crying herself. Or my daughter would start 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, a moment here with Mac and we just have to help him through, you know, and so you learn to process your grief a little better. And the thing I would say to anybody, you know, is, you know,

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  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, you know? And you have to hang on to them. You can't... You know, Mac, I know Mac doesn't want me to grieve and be sad and depressed all day long and

• 1:29:06Theo Von?

  No.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  miss him all day long and, you know, all of that. 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, 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, he's probably a little freaked out about it. Because I'm so obsessed with it, but, uh, but he's also like, Dad, you, you took that little idea and turned it into something.

• 1:29:49Theo Von?

  I know.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  And I've, and sure, Oliver, I brought Oliver Schnay back on and Oliver's producing the second record.

• 1:29:56Theo Von?

  Let's go. Thank you, Oliver.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  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. Uh, Dan is working on three different songs right now. They're all came out of Mac's files. So we are doing something pretty cool and I think Mac, Mac is probably just kind of in shock, a bit, bit in shock that we're going so crazy with it all.

• 1:30:42Theo 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? Um, of the world, of the parts that are tough, you know? How much can we be there for each other? Those are the things that mean something.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Theo Von?

  You know? They really are. And, uh, and it's just, it's, it's the truest thing.

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  And, and parents, you know, we, we just...

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  You know, spending time with your kids and loving on your kids and all of that, that's precious. It's precious stuff, you know, loving on our loved ones and, you know, making sure that they know that we do, you know, that's precious because none of us know, you know, none of us know.

• 1:31:35Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, especially how you even like touch somebody or hold somebody, you know?

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Theo Von?

  It was like most of my life, I just wanted my dad to like put his hand on the back of my neck, you know?

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, give you a pat.

• 1:31:45Theo Von?

  Yeah, or just like even to like hold me like that, you know? It's like a very like familial type of thing, you know? There's things you, yeah, we just want to feel, you know, 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 like, 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 pens of their dad or their mother on their chest and feel like

• 1:32:29Theo Von?

  they're not alone or they're not forgotten about.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  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 was, 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.

• 1:32:58Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  You know, young people, we parent young students up, you know, like a 16 or 17 year old with a 95 year old World War II veteran who survived Iwo Jima or something like that.

• 1:33:12Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  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?

• 1:33:24Theo Von?

  For sure.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  Last May...

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  Both Resurrection and Revival and Resurrection and Revival Part Two 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 Max Sinise with two records. And Forbes, a writer with Forbes, saw that and was like, who's Max Sinise? You know, what is this? 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.

• 1:34:13Speaker 02

  We wanted to continue to inspire people and, and, you know, sharing the story of Mac and the foundation is something that I, I can do all day long. Cause it's a lot of beautiful work.

• 1:34:27Theo Von?

  Oh, well, just the beauty that went into it, the life that went into it, you know? And the fact that, um, you know, uh, that it's like Max's life has been, is now in it, you know? It's like, it's in it. It's giving your life to making something that's not just of you, you know? Like you were saying, like getting out of yourself. You know, I know when I'm not feeling good, it's like, I gotta 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, you know? That's really the truth, um, for me, anyway.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  That's, that's, that's true.

• 1:35:03Theo Von?

  And on the way out today, we will play a couple of Max tunes. We'll keep, um, 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, uh, the Veterans at the Anthem. What is that one called?

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  It's called The Rise. Yeah, that's on the YouTube channel as well.

• 1:35:23Theo Von?

  So maybe we can play the Rise. Is it good? Well, that's perfect for Veterans Day.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:35:28Theo Von?

  And for this week. And yeah, Gary, we want to double our donation too, to you guys. Sorry for being cheap earlier and, uh...

• 1:35:38Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:35:38Theo 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 to spend time with us today and for letting us spend time with Max Life, you know, I can even feel him smiling, dude, I don't even know him, but I can feel it. And uh, yeah.

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:35:54Theo Von?

  It's just so special.

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  I'll come back when we got that part three and we can listen to that one.

• 1:35:59Theo Von?

  Okay, we can just sit here and listen to it sometime too if we want.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  Awesome, bud.

• 1:36:02Theo 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, so.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got, I've got a great family supporting us, both our sons-in-law, we got lucky and, you know, we're, we're just, we're very blessed in a lot of ways.

• 1:36:29Theo Von?

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

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  I will, bud.

• 1:36:40Theo Von?

  Okay, good.

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:36:41Theo Von?

  Thank you.

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

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