Unsubscribe Podcast - Gary Sinise Talks Forrest Gump, His Son Mac & Helping Veterans | Unsubscribe Podcast 257

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

The legendary Gary Sinise joins us this week to tell us all about working as an actor, the amazing work he is doing with his foundation and the tragic loss of his son Mac. Buy Mac’s music: https://store.garysinisefoundation.org/collections/merchandise Watch this episode ad-free and uncensored on Pepperbox! https://www.pepperbox.tv/ WATCH THE AFTERSHOW & BTS ON PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/UnsubscribePodcast 👕 Merch & Shoes https://bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast 🔋 Energy Drinks https://drinkechelon.com P.O BOX: Unsubscribe Podcast 17503 La Cantera Pkwy Ste 104 Box 624 San Antonio TX 78257 ------------------------------ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! SUPERPOWER Head to https://www.superpower.com/unsub and use code UNSUB at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod HARRY’S Get the Harry's Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www.Harrys.com/UNSUB #Harryspod HELLO FRESH Go to https://hellofresh.com/unsub10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling Knife ($144.99 value) on your third box; offer valid while supplies last, new subscribers only. FUM Head to https://www.tryfum.com/UNSUB to get your free gift with purchase, and start The Good Habit today! GHOSTBED Get an extra 10% off already reduced prices at https://ghostbed.com/unsubscribe with code UNSUBSCRIBE at checkout. ------------------------------ FOLLOW OUR SOCIALS! Unsubscribe Podcast https://www.instagram.com/unsubscribepodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@unsubscribepodcast https://x.com/unsubscribecast Eli Doubletap https://www.instagram.com/eli_doubletap/ https://x.com/Eli_Doubletap https://www.youtube.com/c/EliDoubletap Brandon Herrera https://www.youtube.com/@BrandonHerrera https://x.com/TheAKGuy https://www.instagram.com/realbrandonherrera Donut Operator https://www.youtube.com/@DonutOperator https://x.com/DonutOperator https://www.instagram.com/donutoperator The Fat Electrician https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician https://thefatelectrician.com/ https://www.instagram.com/the_fat_electrician https://www.tiktok.com/@the_fat_electrician ------------------------------ unsubscribe pod podcast episode ep unsub funny comedy military army comedian texas podcasts #podcast #comedy #funnypodcast Chapters: 0:00 Welcome To Unsub! 2:01 Gary Sinise’s Military Family 10:43 Gary’s Acting Career & Forrest Gump 17:14 Brandon’s Congress Run 23:20 Gary’s Acting Career 27:30 The Importance Of Community After War 39:18 Major Capers Got His Medal Of Honor! 43:31 Gary’s Theatre Acting 49:26 Post 9/11 & The Gary Sinise Foundation 53:24 Gary’s USO Trips During GWOT 1:11:30 The Gary Sinise Foundation 1:29:50 The Lt. Dan Band & Gary’s Son Mac Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I was the guy with no late. Oh, that guy. That guy. Okay. What's Forrest Gond? Hollywood got very anti-war, anti-Iraq. I have a role to play here in supporting the folks that are serving out there. I'm sure you've had to deal with a lot of politicians in your life?

Fair amount. I'm going to go ahead and guess everyone since the movie Forest Gump came out. Yeah. I'm among friends here now. Eli, he's racially ambiguous. Brandon, his hair is fucking fabulous. Donut, a dark joke disposition, and there's a fat electrician. We'll come to unsubscribe.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the unsubscribe podcast. I'm joined today by Eli Double Tap Fat Electrician. Our very special guest, Gary Seneas, we're in his office. We're his guest, honestly. Brandon Herrera, myself Donald Operator. Thank you so much for being here. Mr. Gary, holy crap, we've been excited for this one for months now.

Like since last year, I think we've been trying to set something up. And finally, everything worked out. And now we are here. And we are stoked because, I mean, Cody's upset. He's got more challenge coins than all this came out. I'm a little upset by it. I thought I had the biggest challenge coin collection in the world. And then I walk into here.

And I told Gary, I'm like, dude, you have so many challenge coins. He says, well, you haven't seen the other room full of challenge coins. We have to have some place to put them all, yeah. Thanks for coming. Eli's being extra respectful when he's not swearing intentionally. I'm like, I won't even curse right now. You're probably used to it. Thanks for coming, guys.

Absolutely. Thank you. So for a quick, I don't even know how to start this one, because you've done so much work in the veteran space, and that's what is awesome to see from all our end. This is just the sheer amount of work and good you do and how to change the lives. And that's – tell the people what got you on that journey, because I think that's a super important one. Because you have a family – you come from like a line of veterans in your entire family history, right?

Yeah, that's where it would start with me. I mean, that's my dad right there. He was in the Navy during Korea. Navy guy up there that's my uncle Jack he was a navigator on a B-17 bomber in World War II

and this is my uncle Jerry on the left he was in the Navy during World War II my grandfather right there who served in the Army during World War I and I've got a great uncle, cousins all this stuff

lots of military in the family and then my wife also on her side of the family Vietnam veterans her two brothers served in Vietnam her sister's husband served in Vietnam her sister served in the Army married a Vietnam veteran they had a son he was in the Army he's now a cop up in Washington State so a lot of service I would I would say that that's kind of the you know that's the family history that kind of laid the groundwork for me getting it so involved. But then there's a series of things that happened over the years that just got me

more tuned up and more invested and more active with all of it. Yeah, because I mean, I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say, but your work specifically, I think you're probably the biggest veteran advocate as far as dollars raised in the country's history. I mean, I can't think of anybody bigger. I mean, what is it now, 400 million? We're over six. $650 million in the 15-year history of the foundation. We're in our 15th year right now. So it started with one donor and then we started branching, you know, just as the foundation got more busier and more well-known, you know, people started hearing about it. The donor base grew, and we have a tremendous philanthropy team.

We're operating many, many different spaces now, and so we're able to raise a good amount of money. But that's a fair amount there over the last several years. Amazing. It's incredible. Yeah, that's insane. That's a number right there. Guys, we need to step it up.

You said that was your grandfather? So this is my grandfather right here. Yeah. He was in the Army in World War I. He drove an ambulance in France. So he, in fact, I have a, you can see across there, there's an album cover on the wall over there. That's a picture of my grandfather on a horse training in Yuma, Arizona,

to go off to World War I. And he ended up, he was in the Army. He ended up driving an ambulance in France during the Battle of the Muzar, And that, you know, that battle, we lost over 26,000 in that one single battle. And he was back and forth from the front line to the rear, just taking the wounded back. And there's one story from my grandfather where he was in a convoy of ambulances. They all had that red cross painted on the side. I don't know why they did that.

It's supposed to mean you can't shoot at us. Yeah, well, the Germans did that. They started targeting the ambulances, and the one in front of them got blown up, and the one behind him got blown up, and he was spared. He just kept driving. So he got very lucky during that. I didn't talk to my grandfather too much when I was a kid. He died when I was in my early 20s.

And, of course, when I got more active with military support and veteran support and all of that, I started looking back in those days and just wished that I'd been, you know, not such a dopey kid that I actually paid attention to what my grandfather had done. Thankfully, my uncle, this one, Uncle Jerry, he was on a ship in the Pacific during World War II. He became a writer after he got home from the war. And so he was able to get my grandfather to talk a little bit. and he wrote down some of the things he said. That's where I know about the story about the ambulances from my uncle, just interviewing my grandfather and trying to get him to talk.

There was a shocking amount of notable people were ambulance drivers in World War I as well. I was thinking that too. It's like Hemingway, Ray Kroc, Walt Disney. Like, there's a lot of notable folks. I don't even know that. Was it Elvis, too? I don't know. It might have been World War II.

Yeah. Elvis drove an ambulance? He had... In World War II? I swear that's what it was. He did something. I know it was something with an ambulance. I think you might be right.

No, I think he was... Elvis was after World War II. I swore he was during... Or is it... Where when... Yeah, when did he join? Well, let's check. Yeah.

Oh, that's... That beautiful little box in our pocket. Let's pull it up on the phone. The nightmare brick in our pocket might have the answer. For sure. Was it... I mean, a lot of that old generation, they really didn't talk about their service, especially if they were in World War I, World War II.

Your uncle getting as much information, did you only grab a couple pieces or a couple stories from your grandpa or great grandpa at that time? Yeah, yeah, just, you know, very limited because my grandfather just didn't want to talk about it too much, you know. But he did share a couple little stories like that with my uncle. And my uncle, again, he wrote books, and he wrote articles and whatnot, and he was able to document my grandpa and what he had done. And so when I wrote a book that came out in 2019, and I talk about my family history, and I pull some of my uncle's stories about my grandfather

and just stuck him in the book, you know, because that's what I know. But I wish, you know, I've been aware as a kid to, to just talk to my, even my uncle Jerry, I never really talked to him much about his service. He was on a ship in the Pacific during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And then he was part of the occupying force in Japan after the surrender. But he lived in Texas and I, you know, I just never engaged with him very much. Do you know what ship he was on?

Because it looks like a battleship? No, that's just a superimposed picture. We just grabbed a ship and put him in front of it. But he was on a landing ship tank. So those were the ships that would roll in, and the ramp would drop down, and a tank would roll out. LST. Yeah, LST. And so he was on 2, 811 and 870.

I have those documented. And, you know, I got to hear some pretty good stories from him about what he had done, because he wrote about his service. a bit. The family history is important. It sets up, you know, a lot. And, you know, I'll tell you, but when I was a kid, I wasn't paying attention to any of it. It all happened later when I started getting more involved with supporting Vietnam veterans and then I played the Vietnam veteran and Forrest Gump and he was a wounded veteran, of course. You were in first film? I was the guy with no lakes. Oh, okay.

Oh, that guy. That guy. What's Forrest Gond? The guy was before your time, I think. Probably. We were all joking before the podcast. We were like, wouldn't it be funny if we all pretended like none of us knew what Forrest Gump was? We just thought you were, we didn't even know you're an actor.

You're just really into the veteran community. We're like, we just have really good stuff about you with what better. They said we should come over with cameras. We were the Garrison Nees Foundation to raise $600 million for veterans. and thought he was a cool guy. Dang. You act? Don't make me take you through it.

I had to throw this out there. Everybody knows you from, you know, Forrest Gump and things like that. I knew you first from Disney World Mission Space, the command center thing. Yes. That's kind of a wild throwback, I'm sure. Yes, sir. The ride that goes to Mars. Yes.

Yes. Okay. I didn't even get. get that it was a reference to your other Mars movie. But I just immediately, as a kid, I was just like, oh, wait, hold on. That's the mission space guy. So when did you go on that ride? How old were you?

Oh, man, I was a kid. I have no idea. So, yeah, I did a movie for Disney, Mission to Mars, about going to Mars. And when they were building the ride, we had a great technical advisor on Mission to Mars. he you know this is an astronaut who've been up six times on the space shuttle uh story musgrave brilliant brilliant guy they hired story to be kind of the technical advisor when they were building the ride to go to mars and uh i got to i got to do the movie and then they asked me to be the capcom on the ride so what he's talking about he you come in to the ride and there's

somebody on on on the screen and they say hi welcome to mission space and here's what you're going to do and watch out don't vomit all that stuff. Advice some people don't take. Yeah, right. But it's a good ride, though. Brandon, can you tell me what Superpower does? Not B. Draws.

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On the way here in Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan invests their money in a quote-unquote fruit company, Apple. Yeah. And it got me thinking, how good of advice would that have been if you just invested in Apple when the movie Forrest Gump came out? Oh. I did the math. If you had to put $1,000 in Apple after watching Forrest Gump in the movie theater, it'd be worth $1.1 million right now. Should have taken your advice when I was five. Yeah, it was like 11.

I wonder how many people did that. You might have changed some lives with your advice. And only 80% of that is inflation. Well, you know. During first gump, you actually did like boot camp or they had you do different kind of training for the military, right? Yeah. Yeah. We went and lived in the woods and did all that, did some training.

I think we were out there for three or four nights and slept out there, did all the boot camp stuff, you know, war games, you know, live with the snakes, all that kind of stuff. And it was great because right after we finished that, we went. went right into the Vietnam sequences. So I had shot already some of the shrimp boat stuff we had done, I think, in the beginning of when I started shooting. And then, and that was with like a long hair wig, you know, because we had to go back and forth between like long hair scenes and short hair scenes.

So I had a long hair wig for, you know, and scruffy stuff on my face. Then I went and took the, wig off, shaved, and then we went into the woods and lived in the woods, and then we went and started shooting the Vietnam stuff after that. So it was very, the timing was good, because by the time we marched in to start shooting all the Vietnam stuff, we were ready to go. And you... At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every

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Because Apollo 13, okay, you did space camp for X amount of days, are correct? I did, yeah. Yeah, so what was the hard one where you're like, okay, this actually sucked way more than I thought it was? Well, I mean, it wasn't fun to, you know, I remember when we were training for Forrest Gump, I went down into an an hill. You know, it's like they had some mortars set up. We were marching across this field, and they had planned. like mortars out there. So, you know, special effects stuff.

So they set these mortars off, you know, and we all hit the deck, right? And I went right into an ant hill and just like, ah, you know what I mean? Ants everywhere, snakes. So that wasn't fun. I didn't like any of that. That was, I would have rather been back in my hotel room at that point. What area was that in? Carolina.

Oh, okay. Buford. Buford? Old Bufert. I'm familiar with that. I was a police officer in South Carolina. Okay, you know, I really liked it there, actually. I loved it down there.

I loved being there. I love shooting there. Years later, they started something where we were supporting our wounded, and a lot of our wounded would come down for the weekend, and they had this thing called Lieutenant Dam weekend. and my band would come and play and they'd have you know

dozens of wounded service members would come down we raised money we were supporting something called the Independence Fund yep and so I and I supported them for a long time

and they wanted to do Lieutenant Dan weekend so I came down and it was great to be able to visit that I went back year after year and I loved the area Charleston yeah

Then we moved the event from Buford. We used to do it right in the town square, right on the water. And my band would play right there. And it got so big, they had to move it up to Charleston. Yeah, I saw you jamming out in Charleston. I love that area, man. You're about to get married there. I'm getting married there in 35 days.

Congratulations. Love you. Congratulations. Yes. And we haven't got to say this on character. Brandon, congratulations. He just won a Congress seat. Oh, yeah, well.

Primary for it. Yeah, primary, yeah. Yeah, I forgot. We haven't done a podcast since, but yeah, I just, I beat out Tony Gonzalez in District 23. Where, where's that? So it's basically all of West Texas. It's the western side of San Antonio all the way out to El Paso. Well, congratulations.

Appreciate it, brother. Thank you. I'm sitting with a politician. I know it sucks, right? Yeah. Feels dirty. I didn't know. Run you floor.

I'll take statesmen. I don't think I'll ever be a politician. Sure. At least I hope not. That's good. That's good. I hope not. Well, congratulations. Congrats on that. Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, we got the news after the fact, because that was a weird, that was weird timing. That was very, very odd. Is it a pun, it dropped? Well, you explained it.

Well, yeah. So March 3rd was the primary. And this was a rematch. I had run against him last time. We had lost by, in a runoff, 407 boats. And so this time, I was hoping he would get better. He didn't. Actually, things got a lot worse. And he, we, we, so I ran again this cycle. We were already looking pretty good in the polls. And then it dropped. He was in a very, very serious scandal where he pressured a subordinate

into a sexual relationship. Can't do that. That's not good. And then afterward basically broke up her home to the point where she committed via self-immolation. So. Oh, my God. It's a, it was a, wild story. The entire, the entire thing was wild. And then he lied to cover it up. He lied the entire time, lied to media, lied to the voters. And then so we shall act him on Tuesday. But neither one of us got above 50%, which means in the state of Texas, you have to go to then a runoff election. So there were four people in the race. We were both in the 40s. We beat him, but not by enough to take it outright. And then two days later. So I'm expecting to go into a three-month runoff election, like another.

election, which I was pretty confident we were going to win. Two days later, he announced he was dropping out. Well, he went, he went on somebody else's podcast and after he had been for six months at this point saying that these were all rumors and they weren't true and calling me a political hit job, he went on a podcast and said, well, actually it is true, but it's not my fault. And then, uh, after that, the speaker of the house, uh, basically told him he needs to step down. So he dropped out of his reelection bid. So Brandon kind of took that by default being most votes.

Yeah, I was sitting at my house bar playing blackjack with with Connor. We're just like screwing around. Like just, you know, trying to like decompress a little bit. Like, okay, we got a big fight to win. It's like 11 o'clock at night. And then I just get my phone. It's just over in the corner on the side of my bar. Just like, oh, shit.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Stress. I think I'm the nominee now. Big news. Yeah.

So it's been a wild, wild journey. He got 50%? What's that? Even with that going on? He got like 41% I think. But that was all, that was all being exposed. It was air it out, man. That had, the confirmation that it was true didn't hit the news until early voting had already started.

Okay. So then it was kind of like, the voting was already happening when it was getting pushed out. So it was a matter of like how many voters could actually see. how many voters that are A, already voted, and B, how many voters weren't going to see or realize that's who it was until that point in time? Because on the ballot, he's still seen as the Republican incumbent. So everybody, if you don't, if you're not super into politics, you kind of just vote for the incumbent because that's what everybody does. They have the highest chance of winning. So I think that's where a lot of the votes came from. Yeah, we had people that came to us, like our like sign waving teams and whatnot. People came up later saying,

I cast my vote on the first day of early voting, I didn't know. Is there anything I can do to help? Which, you know, that's pretty indicative that, you know, it's a major shift. Because he really did. He said that I was lying. He tried to defame my character saying that, oh, no, he's just smearing me politically. I'm like, no, I'm doing the same thing I've been doing since day one, which is tell the truth about you. Yeah, a little background on this guy here.

I got to give him praise. firearms manufacturer started a YouTube channel YouTube channel pretty big and we moved to San Antonio his family's from Texas originally and he one day he just said hey I don't like this guy I don't like my congressman started running and now

he's you might you got it buddy we'll see we'll see and all self-funded and with the help of you know the audience and everything like that no special interests no no big DC money just gave her the best race we could and it was enough to take down a sitting congressman well sounds like he needed to be taken down i think it's pretty fair to say at this point yeah yeah there was an argument before i i don't know if there is one no right and he finally

it finally was so clear there was no ducking around it and he couldn't get it yeah get away with it yeah he basically had to come out and admit it yeah now our friends a politician I know. I still hate that. That word still sounds like a slur. It's because it is. Connor, how do you shave your chest? How do I shave my chest? He doesn't have certain genes like me and Eli do. Yes, I am a Caucasoid. Oh, well, okay, he doesn't have certain genes like I do. Oh, actually, this smells really good. It looks smooth.

It looks smooth. It does a we highly encourage the hosts to get created. Oh, that is a mistake. I'd shave me. Would you shave me? Why does he have forehead hair? You gotta keep it under control, which is why I trust people like Harry's. Actually, that is remarkably smooth. Those are, I use those. They're cheaper than a majority of razors and they're really good. I didn't lube myself up like other folks. So Harry owns its own world-class blade factory in Germany. Harris has launched their most advanced razor ever. I never. Why is he putting deodor in on his neck?

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Well, that'll be an interesting life change. I'm sure if you get in there. Yeah, it's going to be a negative one for me. I'm sure you've had to deal with a lot of politicians in your life? A fair amount. A couple. I've seen the pictures, Gary.

I know you did. You got a casual photo of W. I'm going to say W's over there hanging out with you. Yeah, I wonder where that was. Yeah. Yeah, no, I've met a few. I'm going to go ahead and guess everyone since the movie Forest Gump came out. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that changed that changed a lot. I hadn't done that many movies before that. So I wasn't well known. I had done a lot of theater. And but Forrest Gump was maybe, I don't know what, third, third movie or third or fourth movie, something like that. I mean, wild. Third movie?

Third or fourth? You know, I did like 90, my first. real good part in a movie. I did three movies in 91. And then 92 of Mice and Men came out. I did that as a film. And the producers for Forrest Gump saw that, and they invited me to come and audition.

That was with John Malkovich, right? Yeah. And then I auditioned for it, and I got a couple of good parts that year. You know, when you're in a movie, movie like that that's so popular. And you're not that well known and you play a good part, you know, and things are going to change for you.

So I got some good parts after that. Did you have any idea, like, during the filming that it was going to be as big as it ended up being? No, no. No, you, I mean, I, so I'm working with Tom Hanks. He was a big movie star. So that was a good thing. Bob Zemeckis was top director, really, you know, a lot of.

of success. The script was good. So you got three things going for you there that give you an indication like, oh, you're involved in something that could be pretty cool. But the nature of the, if you remember that, the nature of the way that story was told is you've got Forrest Gump interacting with all these different characters, right? Like there's the Jenny story and there's the Bubba story and there's the Lieutenant Dan story and the Mama story. And we didn't really interact with each other, you know, all those other characters. It wasn't like we were all in the same scene. So I didn't really know what Robin Wright was doing as Jenny.

I didn't know what I knew a couple things about Michael T. Williamson because I was in some scenes with him. But Sally Field, I didn't really know what was going on. Tom was doing all these scenes with everybody else. I didn't know what they were doing. So I didn't know what the movie is going to turn out like until I saw it. Did you have a script that showed, or was it just primarily your? Yeah, no, you have the whole script. Okay.

Well, that was my question, because I've heard, like, some, obviously, every movie's different, but I've heard some people that are like, I don't know what the script even is. I just show up and do what the director says, which would have been very funny from your, your perspective at the time because you're showing up. All right, today you don't have any legs. And then, like, tomorrow you're going to have no legs. You're going to be clean shaven. Today you've got long hair and a beard.

All right. Guess I'm putting on the green socks. We're wheeling around. Real like shrimp. No, I read the whole script. I like to know what the story is. That's good. You know, but the nature of the Lieutenant Dan story is just these little, you know, these little moments.

You know, he's in Vietnam, and then he's in the hospital in Vietnam. Then he's gone. You see him in New York, and then you see him on the shrimp boat. And then it's just these little segments. So, I mean, the story just, what are the story just, what? I like about that story is the way it ends up for our veterans, right? I have a lot of Vietnam veterans in my family. I remember what that was like. I've met so many wounded folks over the years, and we want that story to be the story of success that our wounded have, right? They're able to move on from life.

It's a happy ending, and we haven't really seen the story of a Vietnam veteran have a happy ending in a movie up until that point. But that is a happy ending, and we want that happy ending for everybody who serves our country. I think so. You talked about one of your interviews you were discussing how important community is for the veterans when they get out, and a lot of them just didn't have that. Vietnam veterans wild because that is, you're coming back. You are hated, which none of us have seen or experienced that. We were still drinking on the community thing. Yeah.

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to $60 for five. So no matter what day of the week, Go's got you covered. Find out more at go-transit.com slash tickets. As you said, I think it was family or friends that they had more success if they were still with that community, the veteran community, or they stayed active duty during that transition period versus the people that got out and just went into the civilian world. They were lost a lot of the times. Well, my wife's two brothers are two, too. two different stories like that. One, stayed in the Army, career Army guy. Silver Star recipient in Vietnam, two tours in Vietnam.

Very West Pointer, high-profile guy. Unfortunately, he got cancer in 83 and died of cancer. But he was very, very, profound impact on the Army. kind of person. He rewrote the entire leadership manual for the army. He was very invested in the army, going to have a career. If he had lived, he would have been a four-star. There's no question about it. He would have been in the Iraq War and Afghanistan conflicts, all of that. He was that career army guy. Then the second brother, the younger of the two brothers, with a helicopter pilot who went in, he was like the second son, you know.

The first son was the father really looked to him as, you know, he was very proud of him going to West Point and all that. The second son wanted to kind of, I think, be a part of that. And so he joined the Army, helicopter pilot, 800 combat hours, but it was rough on him. It was rough on him, and he came back and got out of the army, and he struggled. Still struggles. He survived.

He's still alive, but still struggles. I mean, he kind of withdrew from life in a way, kind of recluse a bit. And I think, and for my other brother-in-law who served in combat as a combat medic, he stayed in the Army, too, after Vietnam. And I think it was just easier for folks to come back from Vietnam and still be amongst their fellow Vietnam veterans who were still serving in the Army. They had this community of support.

They'd all been through it. You know, they were still serving their country. It was a bit different for them, I think, than somebody who came home, got out of the service and tried to just disappear and forget about it. I also wonder, I don't know what the answer to this is, but I'm just kind of like, I don't know, pontificating. If it was a little bit easier for guys after World War II was over. Because that was something that if you were a red-blooded male, you know, you went and you served.

Like that was kind of a universal experience for everyone. Whereas G-WAT, that's not the case. Yeah, stuff like that. Like it's, it was something that if there was another guy that was your age, out in public, odds are we served together. we did the same thing. And that's just not the case anymore. And I wonder if that makes it harder on veterans nowadays. Like even in the TV show, the Pacific, like, the ending of that show touches on it.

Because, like, even the Pacific War veterans were treated a lot different than the European War veterans for World War II. Just because, like, the general consensus back home when World War II, like, a lot of people on the civilian side and especially, like, Europeans, too, um, when Hitler surrendered, that was the end of World War II in a lot of people's minds. Like the Pacific theater was like a side quest to a lot of people. So like, I'll get into my comment sections on like the history videos I do. Like I've had Europeans comment like, this guy thinks World War II ended when Japan surrendered.

What's he talking about? And it's like it because it because it did. But to them it was it was just a European theater. And the end of the Pacific shows that where the Pacific War veterans are coming home, you know, six, eight months. it's a year later after the occupation of Japan. And they're looking for a job. And they're like, I just got back from the service. And they're like, what do you, the war ended a year ago?

What are you talking about? Why are you just now looking for a job? And he's like, no, I was, I was in the Pacific. And like the civilians are genuinely confused because they thought the war had been over for, like, way longer. They weren't thinking about that. We occupied Japan for as long as we did. Exactly. And the other crazy part to me, it's like doing war history and hearing even,

And people like you talking about your families where it's like America's really, really young because like I wouldn't have thought that your grandfather would have been old enough to have fought in World War I. Makes sense if I look at the timeline, but like it seems so long ago to me versus, you know, and then his grandfather easily could have fought

in the civil war. So it's like you're like eight, we're eight people. Well, no, no, he was in a, he was an Italian. So my, my great grandfather, and there's a picture of them over there. He came over from Italy in the late 1800s. And my grandfather was one of nine kids. Five were born in Italy.

And then his father moved to Chicago from Italy and four more children were born. So maybe the Civil War in Italy. It's funny, though, to see those timelines, those things that you wouldn't think would work out. Like, because we have videos, like actual videos of Civil War veterans, like speaking and, like, talking to each other and things like that. It's also like, well, it's one of those where you just segment these things in your mind, but you don't actually think about, okay, where this went. Like, for example, I know the meme that gets shared around is Rosa Parks lived to see the movie Shrek. Yeah. It's like things that in your mind don't make sense.

Well, like, oh, well, hell, I guess that's true. Even what he just said about how, you know, if he had stayed in, he would have been a four-star general. He would have been in Iraq as a Vietnam veteran. Like, it doesn't sound. But then, like, I read up on war heroes and it's like, oh, this guy got his Medal of Honor in Vietnam, but he also jumped into Normandy. Like, that seems crazy to me that you fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The timeline makes sense. My great-grandfather did that.

But it's just weird to me. Or like we did, it's been clipped to oblivion on the internet. But we were talking about the, God, what is it? his name. General Clint. He was the nine-year-old drummer boy in the Civil War. He was a nine-year-old drummer boy in the Civil War was when he started his service and he served his entire life and he ended up being a general in World War I. Like, it's just crazy. Somebody can see that many different stages of war, especially that going from that's a big job. Muskets to machine guns and tanks and in your lifetime. And planes. Yeah. In a different country. Yeah. That's crazy. I like my,

my grandfather was a combat dozer or combat engineer in the Pacific in World War II then fought in Korea and then was did some like spooky advisory stuff in Vietnam and so the way that it was described to me anyway was that in Vietnam his role was we'll go up in a plane he was a pilot

we'd go up in a plane we'd take pictures of things with the locals and then the next day when we went up in that plane again the things we took pictures of weren't there anymore. Then we had to take the topographer up to update maps. It was kind of one of those. I heard that there was like a family gathering. It's like, oh, yeah, I was in Vietnam from this time to this time.

Grandpa, we weren't in Vietnam then. He's like, I was. Hey, do you know what's better than anything, brother homemade cooking? Oh, God, Eli, are we doing this bit again? Yes, we are. I'm not doing the macho man bit. I've got Hello Fresh for three minutes. Hello Fresh rises to the top.

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box, new subscribers only varies by plan. It sucks that we don't have those interviews of those World War I veterans, because those are those stories. It's all those stories that are lost throughout history because we don't have. We do have some. How many one-on-ones with World War I veterans? Are there that many? I'm sure.

There has to be. It gets a lot harder after World War II to find personal accounts. I mean, as far as like actual, like, writing books and, like, recording war experiences, it gets a lot tougher once you get past like Audi Murphy. Like Audi Murphy's book to Hellen Back was like one of the first big books where a war hero actually wrote down their perspective and their story. Yeah, there weren't Navy Seals back then. So there's not a lot of books.

Damn it. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I like not to break my wrist or anything. But it was why I like what we do on UnSub with bringing Onsub. so many World War II vets because I remember, you know, in my lifetime growing up, the moment I saw the headline that the world's last World War I veteran died. Yep. And thinking like, wow, okay, those are stories that can never be told now. And so giving them the platform, the opportunity to be able to tell those stories is super

important. Yeah, you know, Belize you told Gary who we had on? We have Papa Jake. Don Graves. Don Graves, Al. Al. We've had three World War II veterans and one was at the raising of the the flag at Yorima, like he was there during that.

And then Grandpa Jake was Battle Bowl. For both of them. Yeah, and Normandy. Hearing his version of the story is hilarious because he's like, yeah, we raise the first one up on some drainage pipe we found, but then they said the flag wasn't big enough. So they had to go grab one off of one of the battleships and bring it over. We had to do it again for the picture. Gary, I'll tell you, Papa Jake, he was trying to steal our girls the entire time.

He was, he was, dude, he was, he was risen up the ladies the whole time. He was not interesting. interested in any of the guys at all. Look at the smile on your fiance's face right now. What do you mean trying? He's at that old man. He was succeeding. Don Graves is pretty, pretty frisky too.

I can say you had to have known Don. Which I don't think we... He's pretty well. I mean, he's got more energy than, geez. We've had Don on some trips and that kind of thing. Don is awesome. Pretty special guy. Any excuse that man has to sing.

Yeah. He'll do it. He loves that. God, I remember, because I think I was one of the first people to sit down at the table with Don and like Eli was getting the cameras ready. You guys were like getting the drinks ready or whatever and I was just sitting there with him and he just starts rattling off like pure gold and I'm like, Eli, turn the cameras on, turn the cameras on right now.

We're going to have to bleep half of this. This is amazing. No, it wasn't even that. It's just like the dude just sits down and just starts dropping like incredible stories just off the top of his head and it's like, God, everything he's says is so cool. I don't know if we've gotten a chance to say it on the podcast yet, but rest in peace, Papa Jake. Yeah. Papa Jake passed. We lost him a couple months ago. We helped with the statue of Papa Jake, though. Did we? So they'll have an unsub thing under it stone because

we threw some money towards it for that to get erected. That's awesome. We had him and then major capers actually just got his, I think he got approved for the Medal of Honor, right? Did he get approved? I haven't heard that. I think that does. I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. Oh, awesome. Look it up. Do you know who Major Capers is? He was, uh, he was, uh,

not Marine Raider. He was, Force Recon. Force Recon Marine during Vietnam and, uh, led a team. And, um, basically he, he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor, but, uh, he was what, I believe he was the first black officer in American

history to receive a field promotion. like in theater. And he has, he has this incredible story, this humongous military career. And he basically kind of got shafted for the Medal of Honor. And there's been a humongous push

to get that retroactively fixed. And it's got approved. He got approved. Very nice. Yes. Congressman Norman Bills is to award James Caper with the Medal of Honor. I'm excited for it.

He deserves it. He really does. There's also a thing about him being like one of the first, I don't know what the, the qualification is called, but black combat divers. Yeah.

Yeah, because his story on that when he was going to dive school was crazy because he, he showed up to dive school. And the person, I don't know if it was a literal doctor, but the medical person in charge of the program didn't even want to let him go through the course. Because according to what Major James Capers was told was he has medical evidence that black people can't swim is what they told him. And he's like, no, I can, I can swim. and he ended up passing the course and performed, I think he said three combat dives. Yeah. And yeah, just a crazy military career.

Is that what they told you in Buds? Yeah. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s,

one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when West Jet welcomes you on board. Here's to West Jetting, 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. They just sink, dude. I don't know what to tell you. The fastest swimmers we had in butts were the black dudes. One of my favorite moments, we've done hundreds of these podcasts. One of my favorite moments is I had read his book prior to him coming on. And he has a story about when they were in, they were in Vietnam on a mission coming back. And on their way back

up to their fob, which is on top of this big hill slash mountain, uh, they had to cross a river and they found a 26 foot long python that weighed like 300 pounds. And they couldn't carry it across this river, but they were, they told everybody up on the fob that they found this gigantic snake and they're like, no, you didn't. That's not true. Whatever. So one of the helicopter pilots flew him back down and they captured the snake and kept it as a pet and they named it Gomer. And they were, they ran into town and they were feeding it ducks. Well, he tells this whole story and it's hilarious. And then we have his book on the table and we flip through it. And in the pictures, there's a picture of him and his guys,

like six dudes to hold up this snake. It's humongous. And there's two pictures like that. And one picture says Gomer number one. And the other picture says Gomer number two. And I was like, how many snakes did you catch? He's like, oh, yeah, we caught another one in Panama, too. So he's just catching these gigantic pythons while he's out on missions for fun. This is in operations. That's awesome. Pulling back from a mission and be like, whoa,

I mean, fuck spin up the helicopter. Grab that 300 pound snake. That's going to be cool. And they put a bag over it. It's the most dude thing I've ever heard of. That guy's got to have something to do. They didn't have Xboxes on the fob yet.

Oh, man. You've been in many, many movies. But as you said, Forrest Gump was number three or four? Yeah. Yeah, early on. Yeah. And then it was just big movie after big movie, because you've done three with Tom Hanks?

Yeah, Apollo 13 was one I did right after. Never heard of it. And I did the Green Mile with him. It was American propaganda to make it look like we went to the moon. Oh, thank you. Fake stuff, yeah. They used the same studio, actually. Were you, because you say you didn't know how big your, you know, Forrest Gump would be,

especially your role with Lieutenant Dan, were you at all concerned, like after it did blow up and got as big as it did, that you were going to kind of be typecasted into that military type role? Because, I mean, I don't think you were. You went in every role is significantly different. You're not just like the Army guy in every movie. Were you concerned about that? No, I wasn't worried about that. Okay.

No. I ended up, you know, you might get offered some things, but. I just was looking for the best projects that were coming my way at the time. And ended up, played Harry Truman in a movie for HBO. That was an interesting project because, you know, it's a historical figure. Footage of him, you know, lots of documentation, a lot of books. So the trick there is you're creating an impressing. of somebody who really lived, right?

So you've got to do a believable enough impression that people kind of go with it and forget it to you. So that was a good acting challenge. I started shooting that right after the Oscars for Forrest Gump. I left like the next day and went and started shooting Harry Truman. So some really good projects started coming my way at the time. The 90s were very, very good.

Good time. I'm curious what got you into acting? What made you want to want to get it? Because you said you did theater first. What made you want to do all that? Well, I was a bad student in high school. I'm among friends. I'm among friends here now.

Yeah, bad student in high school, failing a lot of classes, not doing well, playing in a rock band. getting into trouble, all that kind of stuff. And I just stumbled into auditioning for a play, for the hell of it. I saw all the pretty girls walking in, and I followed him in, and I, you know, thought, okay, give me the script, I'll try it. You know, and I auditioned for West Side Story, the musical, and I got in it. I got a little tiny part in it. And, you know, here I was.

I was probably getting ready to get kicked out of school at the time. And that whole theater community and the fun that I had doing that show and everything just changed everything for me. It really was a turning point. And the teacher that I had was unlike any teacher I'd ever had before. She just was different. And she saw something in me that was, that, you know, that, you know, that, you know, that, she kind of encouraged.

And I was, you know, and then after that play, I just wanted to be in all these shows, and I ended up doing really well in theater. Ended up starting a theater company when I got out of high school called Steppenwolf, and that theater company is now over 50 years old. We ended up, we were little kids. We ended up building a building that takes an entire city block. So it really is a great American dream story where you start with absolutely nothing,

just kids wanting to do some plays, and it turns into something special. These caricatures up here on the wall are from different Steppenwolf plays that we moved to New York and did on Broadway or off Broadway. And we started moving our shows to New York. That gave us a lot of international.

recognition and because of the international recognition we were able to raise the amount of money that we needed to raise to build a building and we ended up building a building. That's awesome. Are you still like very heavily involved in that? No, no. I'm, um, you know, I support my support, but September 11th changed everything for me. I was, I was in New York that year doing one of our shows. And it was a Broadway show, big hit, all of that. It closed about six weeks before the attack of 9-11. And I was profoundly impacted by that whole incident.

And everything changed for me. I just decided that that's when I got super heavily involved in all this. and I didn't go back and do plays after that. That was the last play I did because I turned towards service and volunteerism and raising money for our veterans and entertaining them and building houses for wounded, all these different things that we do.

That became the mission. I ended up getting a TV series after that, which was lucrative and very, very good at the time. To have a television series right at the time that I was getting so involved in all of this was a great benefit, not only financially, but when you have a public platform like that, you're on television every week,

and it's a hit show and it's doing well. I had a megaphone. I could get up and talk about what I was doing on USO tours and visiting the hospitals and talking about all that. And it gave me a good reputation, in the community and I got so busy with all of that I haven't been back to do theater since Connor what are you doing I'm fuming brother you fuming okay you ain't never seen nobody cheap a fume like this boy can fume responsibly look at Connor I'm cured from what my oral fixation I would have something else in my mouth right now but thanks to fume it's not made of human flesh

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Did Hollywood ever have a problem with your involvement with like how passionate you are about the U.S. military? A problem in what way, wouldn't it? It's like there's a lot of, you know, like anti-war actors or producers or things like that. Did anyone ever, like, do you ever have a problem with that? No, not me, but I was actually, I know what you're talking about. about like during the Iraq war, you know, everything, you know, we were kind of a nation that came together after September 11th, right?

We were, we wanted to do something about what had it happened to us as a nation. But as time went on and we went into Iraq after that and everything like that, things started to splinter again. And Hollywood got very anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq stuff. I didn't feel that way and I'll tell you why because as I said I've got Vietnam veterans and my family

I could sense that hey what's happening right now in the country is very similar to what was happening to our Vietnam veterans the media and folks are turning against the war the soldiers

the Marines the people that are serving they're going to get caught in the middle of all that and I don't want that to happen. So I just started to go on tours and go overseas and go to the war zones and go to the hospitals and, you know, support organizations that were helping our service members. And I, the more I sensed all that stuff coming, you know, like, it just motivated me to do a lot more. Did that affect me in the movie and television business? No. I was the least.

and a hit show. So what are they going to do about it? I mean, you know, I had a television show. I know. I love it. You know, had a TV show every week. The show was doing well. Like I said, it gave me financial security that was beneficial,

and I could start a foundation with that and all that. But I also had that public platform. And so I'd do interviews, and I'd say, People would ask me about what you've been doing, and I'd say, well, I just went to Afghanistan or something, and here's what I saw. Here's the people that are serving our country. This is what they're doing.

This is why we should support them. I got to see a lot of things on the inside that, you know, the average American doesn't get to see what gets done, right? I mean, they don't see the people that serve in the way that somebody who's maybe related to somebody. You know, you have a personal relationship, to somebody who's serving in the military or on the police force or something. So you see it in a different way than the average American who may not have a personal connection.

So I felt like I was kind of a little bit of a bridge. I could go to the war zones and I could go see what people do and, you know, train with the special forces, see what they actually do, and then come back and talk about it and let people know how fortunate, that we are, that we have such exceptional people serving our country. And so somebody like me is saying that kind of stuff. I mean, some people paid attention. Others probably thought it was, you know, it wasn't what they wanted to hear. But I felt like that's my role. My role is to, I have a role to play here in supporting the folks that are serving out there. And it turned into a full-time thing. of which with your trips to like Iraq and Afghanistan, things like that with the U.S.O.

How did that transition work? It's one of those things. You wake up one day. You're like, I think I want to do something. I want to make a difference. How did that conversation go? Well, I wanted to, you know, after September 11th, like I said, I just felt heartbroken and crushed by that. And I wanted to do something. I wanted to get involved. And so what do you do? I had been involved a little bit with the disabled American veterans organization because of Forrest Gump. And I'd been supporting the DAV for a little while. But how do I support our active duty folks that are now deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq and we're in a war now? And they're getting hurt.

And they're getting killed. And families are losing loved ones. and people are really banged up. You know, they need some support. So one of the first things I did was contact the U.S.O and just say, hey, I want to go on a trip. And it's funny. I've told this story before, but I left some messages on their machine. I called the U.S.O and said, I'm Gary Seneese.

I want to go on a tour, and I didn't hear anything back. And then I called him back again. I said, hi, I'm Gary Seneese. I really love to go on a U.S.O. tour. Go to Iraq or whatever. Didn't hear anything back. Then I started to think. Oh, you dropped the lieutenant.

Okay, yeah. They don't know who Gerey Seneas is. So I'm going to call back. I said, I'm the guy who played Lieutenant Dan. I want to go on a tour. And then they called me back. So I wasn't real well-known at that point. You know, this is back in, this is before CSI, New York.

I'd done, you know, I'd done Ransom with Mel Gibson. I'd done Apollo 13. I'd done some pretty big movies. I did The Stand, which was a miniseries on ABC. So, but still I wasn't like a recognizable name actor. So I figured that out. I figured, oh, okay, I got to tell them who I am. So they called me back and I went, I started going on tour.

and I went on the first one to Iraq. It was the first big USO tour to Iraq in June of 2003. We hadn't sent a tour over there yet. We'd just gone into Iraq in March. Remember the statue coming down? And that was in April. And then in June, I was over in the war zone. Are you that green zone?

That would have been like Iraq, a surge, wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's during the surge. you're pulling down the statues and there's maybe one green zone at that time where did you go that entire experience like i no we this is this is yeah this is before uh the insurgency and all that so this is right just within months of us getting there right pulling the statue down we had we were in bagdad we were all over the place and so i went over there on the first big u s o tour and there were 180 of us on this tour. Northwest Airlines gave us an airplane

and 747 taken all of us over there on the plane. Kid Rock was on that tour. Leanne Womack. Gosh, basketball players, football players, Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. I mean, it was a big tour.

Dude, it was crazy. When we pull up to base, because I lived out in some, So I had come back and we see posters for, it's like, hey, this person's coming to the base. I'm like, duh. I don't get it beyond the base any of those times. I was just thinking about the chronological possibility that you Kid Rock and Eli were in country at the same time. Yeah, were you there in like 2007, 2008?

Yeah, I was in, yeah, both years. Yeah, see, probably there and I was out in sector. Be like, okay. Oh, you got served together. Gosh, yeah, I was there both years. I was in Belad. Oh, yeah, I was in Balad, too. Taji and all these different places.

I was, both those years, I did two in a row. A lot of beautiful. If you get a lived there. I was at Camp Anaconda. Yep, yeah. What is the service member equivalent of Eskimo Bros? Yeah, pretty much. I know this area.

How was it like getting out that plane the first time? because that had to be hot. Yeah, a change for you. You're not prepared for war. And we just got in the country eight months ago. Hey, here, can you entertain these people? That's a wild.

I'm sorry, I can't get you being in character for Lieutenant Dan surrounded by Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders out of my head. That was entertained. It's like the New Year's. Did that mean? Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.

Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. That was fun. was funny.

How was it? Getting off the plane, it was hot. Like 150 degrees or whatever. Oh, the temperature, I thought we were still high about the cheerleaders. My bad. Well, that was hot, too. Better than the fire ants. I am, Lieutenant.

We had a great tour, though. I mean, that was, it was called Project Salute, that 2003 tour. And then... Was it scared? though like was anyone worried going into that? Because that would have been

military you signed up for it. You're going to war. You're going to a country where a war is happening. They prep you for it. But from your side, I want to do a good thing. I'm going to make a difference

landing in country, getting off in a C-130 or Black Hawk. And you're like, oh, it's really hot. Yeah. No, we landed in Kuwait first. And then we went up to Baghdad. you know there were so many of us 180 on that first tour that we split off into three different groups and i remember one group like was went into kawait another group went up into iraq another group

flew out to a carrier in the gulf out there we were just splitting off and trying to cover as much territory as possible and i remember um i went up yeah i went up to uh you know we're doing a lot in kawade I went up to Baghdad, did some stuff, came back, and then Tommy Franks, he was running the war. And he said he wanted to go, he was going up to Baghdad the next day, and he wanted a small group to go with him. And so I went back up into Baghdad with Tommy Franks, and Robert De Niro was on the airplane. You know, we're on a C-130 and we're going up. That was an incredible trip. and I wanted to go back once I got home.

So we were well protected, and we weren't going to anywhere. You know, we were such a big tour that we weren't like fob hopping or anything like that. The second time I went back, I went back that same year in November, just whatever it was, four months later. That one was a little bit different. I remember mortars coming in, you know, at one point. And it felt to me like everything was rattling, like the pipes were rattling or something like that. I was sleeping on a cot in this room. There are no lights, no electricity.

And I was like, what's going on here? And I came out, and there were two soldiers just sitting there. Just sitting there. The building had been rattling. I think we're smoking. And they were just sitting there like this, you know. And I'm like, what's going on? You know?

I'm like, and they said, oh, the mortars, you know, mortars coming in. Just another day. Yeah, you know, it's another night. The James Franco meme, first time. Yeah. I don't look at my eyes. They were not, I mean, if they weren't going to freak out, you know, and like, okay, everybody's out. We're going into the bunker or whatever.

But they weren't. It was a routine, and they could tell how far away they were. by the noise, you know. So they knew that we were, at that point, this was kind of a routine thing. Bad guys out there throwing the mortars in at this time of night, you know, kind of thing. I would have been more. But that was the first time for that, you know. I would have looked at my buddy.

Like, we're dead. Gary Senese is here. This makes zero sense. We're having. We need to run. My current job is to guard Lieutenant Dan. What are we doing here? You had two guys out there not doing anything

You hear incoming stumble out of the tent hungover He's like Lieutenant Dan The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders Oh I got him I'm going that way Running with the cheerleaders Follow the shorts

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any of the USO shows like intentionally got attacked or anything like that. With me when I was on that? I mean, with you? In general. No, no. We did, uh, there, uh, outside of blog. there was a big soccer stadium. It was a big soccer stadium.

Saddam Hussein and his family used to, like, torture people in this stadium. But we... Wait, what? Yeah. Out of all the places, they were, like, as an intentional, like, media event? Bad stuff would happen in that stadium, yeah. And we saw... I was in palaces with swimming pools, and there were, like, empty swimming pools with blood

on the side. Wow. You know, there was some ugly stuff that they did, the bath party and all that. They did some ugly stuff. But I remember the soccer stadium, and I was with Wayne Newton, Chris Isaac. Your tour was way better than my tour. Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't. And I got to leave after a few days.

Eli's like, he didn't even get shot. Dang, this sucks. Do you know who Neil McCoy is? Neil lives in Texas He's a country singer and everything Neil was on that trip Great guy And so we were entertaining on that trip

And we did a big There's a picture around here Somewhere From that trip Me talking to thousands of troops In the soccer stadium And there was probably 5 or 6,000

In the soccer stadium This is in the Balad area 5 or 6,000 troops, you know, they're all out there. It didn't feel dangerous to me or anything like that. It felt like, okay, we're here. It's November 2003, fairly early on after we kind of started occupying things. We went out to visit some Iraqi schools that they had helped to rebuild. I started a program after that called Operation Iraqi Children.

We started shipping school supplies over to the troops in Iraq, and they would take them out and give them to the kids, put them in the convoys, you know, roll into a sort of somewhat tense situation, just get out, started handing out stuff, and it changed the mood. So that was a good program, and that started because of the November trip.

So I didn't feel, there were a couple, you know, a couple times where it felt a little sketchy in the convoy. you know just going down the road and stuff you're kind of looking around you know wondering what's going on but we we were we were pretty good nothing nothing happened do you know anything happened like to any of the others like because i want to say there was one show that did get attacked but i don't remember or an attack happened during the show rather a lot of the time i don't remember you'd have mortars i was going to expect you to deal with like a one mortar incoming and it is as you said bala's huge like belot is a massive base and that was big

yeah and you'll have one that's did they even have the alarm systems at that time? Or is it just like, oh, yeah. So it's boom, boom, boom, you'll hear them. You'll see either people running or they don't care. And they're like, eh, whatever. But was it only about one mortar situation? Yeah, that night.

Because I was only there that one night. Of course. The one night you're there. Yeah, I was there that one night. But it seemed kind of routine. Like it was sort of a routine thing or something. Oh, yeah. Speaking of incoming.

Yeah. Yeah, incoming at that time of night. Oh, it was a daily. If you lived on a big base, it was expected. If you loved out in a cop, never get mortar because it's so small. But when you're on a giant place like Balad or Eagle, any one of those is just shoot a mortar and see what happens. Yeah. When I was at Bogram in Afghanistan, some similar things.

Some alarms went off. We had to hunker down and stuff like that. but I don't recall anything coming in, but there was a reason they set the alarms off. So, yeah, you feel sometimes some pretty dangerous situations. On the other hand, I'm with a group that's surrounded by a bunch of guys with guns. So, I mean, they protected us pretty well over there. Not a bad place to be.

The show you're talking about is when Toby Keith came to Kandahar Airfield, and he played and I was there, and it got bombed. Oh, really? Canterhar. Yes, sir. So it was my first tour. I landed, and then I ate at a Burger King at the boardwalk. The boardwalk?

Yeah. I played a concert on that. You did? I did. Man. In 2009, I played a concert on the boardwalk. I was playing a concert in 2009, but it wasn't that, you know what I'm saying? Well, they had, like, Subway and Tim Hortons.

It's crazy, yeah. Yeah, and a bunch of fast food places on this boardwalk. So you were where? So we landed there, but then we went to Garmzer, and then I did that tour but my second tour did the invasion into Marcia but like I just landed there

my daughter had just been born and have like all these weird feelings and I'm eating like a whopper at the peak of the military it's surreal yeah I think you did a video on that like are the Army's deployable Burger King that we have?

The Army has a deployable Burger King can be anywhere in the world God I love this fucking country so much we're the best dude nothing more demoralizing to the enemy is like they're bringing in a lot of troops they're bringing out a trailer What's in that?

They brought a Burger King with them? They're going to smoke you and they're going to have a good time. Or Subway, there was a Subway. There was a Subway too. It was, I heard they even put a TGI Fridays in there. Wait, what? I swear to you, you can look this up on the line, but I heard they put a TGI Friday's in there. Is it just as mediocre in the Middle East?

Yes. TBI Fridays. My first meal was like something like Subway or Burger King. when I got to Kandahar. It's wild because it's such a big active base, especially at that time with all the NATO forces and stuff. And the Marines were literally off where they turned into like a waste depot.

We're literally bringing capitalism with us. Yeah, all over. Democracy's the best. How do these troops get by? It's called a Whopper. Oh, oh. But he came in and he was playing him and Scotty Emrick, I think is his name. They were playing

some songs and stuff and he got to the end and he started playing the Taliban song and then the sirens went off, the air raid sirens and then like the Air Force attaché ran up there and was like no no no and like we're all there because we're a bunch of animals. We started booing.

We're like get back out here and then he came back out and he's like well I guess I'm going to finish the Taliban song since they're attacking us and he finished the song and then they took him away but it was like crazy. I had a belly full of Burger King and Toby Keith singing the Taliban song. But he wasn't playing on the boardwalk. No, he was like off in a different area.

Okay. Because they wouldn't list go over there, but he was just like, the Taliban, baby. You know, like this. They ban the Marines from the boardwalk. Is that what you're telling me? Shortly thereafter, we were not allowed to go back to the boardwalk. I wonder why. Bordering incidents.

On that trip. Now I just, you know, the guy that played Bubba and Forrest Gump, Michael T. Williamson, I took him with me on that trip. No kidding. Yeah, and he plays harmonica, so he got up and. played with us a little bit. Oh, it's awesome. Yeah, it's sick. It's crazy. And, you know, just from my perspective as a veteran, I really appreciate everything your organization is done for so many people. Tyler Vargas Andrews, to name's few. Like, you've literally changed lives

and gone out of your way to help people who need it the most and, like, really show what true patriotism is, and it, like, means a lot to me. Thank you. From, like, the deepest part of my heart. I'm not often serious, but I do mean this. Well, I appreciate what you did for our country. It was my honor. Thank you so much. I'm going to try it back out with a more handsome version. It's crazy. Thanks for sharing that, though.

Yeah, it was awesome. Thank you, sir. Good stuff. Just the amount of work you've done. And go into more depth with what your foundation does. Because it changes lives in different ways and how it helps community. So what is some of the big ways Gary Sinise is helping veterans or soldiers? Or families.

Or families. Right? Right. You know, like I said, I got involved a long time ago, decades ago, and it just kind of spiraled into something. I wrote a book called Grateful American, and there's a chapter in the book called Turning Point. And that is really the September 11th chapter and what that moment did to kind of galvanize me towards. the service or veterans and first responders. And before I had my own foundation, one way that I would do it was start with a lot of different foundations that were in a lot of different spaces, right?

Helping our wounded, building houses for them, helping our families of our fallen entertainment, whatever it was. And I would get involved with a lot of different organizations and support them. And so that gave me a lot of insight into where the needs were and what different organizations were doing to fill those needs and how I as a public figure could best benefit that effort. So I started getting more and more and more involved in all these different efforts. I actually, the home building stuff that we do where we build houses for our wounded. service members that actually started i got involved with that before i had a foundation so once i created the foundation we created a program we started raising money now we've we just gave away our

hundred and first home that i've been involved with since 2010 and so 15 years and we just just just this past week we gave away our 101st house um but i saw that that that was a need that was not, it was not a service that was provided to our Vietnam veterans when they came home, right? Oh, let me build you a house, you know. It was Vietnam veterans disappear because it was not a good time to be a Vietnam veteran. I didn't want that to happen again, you know, to Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. And so got involved with the home building effort. So, started doing that. Now we have a very vigorous program where we not only build homes, but we provide adapted vehicles, mobility devices, you know, track chairs, wheelchairs, that kind of thing.

We do home modifications. So we have, you know, dozens of home modifications in the queue right now where we will go in somebody's, you know, and we do, you know, and we do. these for elderly veterans. We do this for anybody who's serving, right? You've got a lot of aging veterans and, you know, maybe they're having trouble in their house. They can't get up the stairs anymore. We make the bedroom downstairs much bigger for them. We go in, we fix the bathroom up, whatever. We do modifications. But we're still building a lot of homes from the ground up for people that have been very, very badly wounded. Tyler is one of those, you know.

In fact, Tyler, Bargis Andrews, when he was first wounded in that stupid withdrawal, I reached out pretty quickly to the hospital to find out what was going on with our wounded and talked to his mom. and started communicating with his mom because he couldn't really communicate. And I wanted her to know that there were services that we could provide should he need that. And I'm glad that eventually he came around to applying for the program. You know, he sacrificed a lot. And we want to do something to give back to him.

So we have a couple of our wounded from the Abigate mess that we're building for. We probably have 20 in the queue right now. I mean, we thought maybe this was going to start to wind down a little bit. There wouldn't be as much of a need for us to build the especially adapted smart technology houses for badly wounded service members. but there are a lot of needs out there. So I don't want to be somebody who says no a lot, you know. So we have a pretty vigorous program, and we're trying to provide those services on multiple fronts

to help a lot of different people. We've had World War II programs for World War II veterans. We just, you know, we're taking a bunch of Rosie the Riveters down to the New Orleans to the national. World War II Museum, wherever we can serve those who have served and defended and protected us, that's where I want my foundation to place its efforts. And I feel blessed that the American people have kind of put their trust in us, you know, send us their donations.

Or, you know, they help us. If we have a special project or something, like we'll have a disaster, or a hurricane or something like that, our National Guard starts going in helping. Well, we back them up. We'll go in with disaster relief stuff to help them help the people. So we're operating in a lot of different areas,

mainly focused, of course, on supporting first responders, supporting our veterans, supporting our active duty, supporting our families of our fallen, and, you know, wherever we can place our hands and wrap our arms around these people. That's what I want my foundation to do. And I'm glad you brought up the mobility part of that because a lot of people don't realize just how bad the VA is with stuff like that.

I mean, I'm representing now or about to be one of the biggest veteran districts in the entire country with, you know, Fort Sam Houston, Fort Bliss, everything like that. There's people that I've talked to that, you know, need, for example, like a mobility. like a electric wheelchair, essentially. And there's limitations on if it breaks. Like, for example, in this case, like a battery broke. Like, okay, well, can we get it replaced? Well, no. Okay, well, if I go out and purchase the battery, will you service it?

We'll also know. Okay, can I get another one? No, you're owed one every six years, I think, is the cutoff. And so this guy's just, he's being forced to wheel around as elderly disabled veteran. I don't think there's an excuse for that. You know what? Here's what I would say about that. First of all, if we didn't have the number of nonprofits that are in the space, veterans in First Reform or sports space, there would be a catastrophe.

I don't believe that the government can do everything. The government does certain things. I know my dad benefited from his V8 benefits and all that. and many veterans do. But I always say, look, we as citizens who benefit from the freedom and protection of our defenders, there's a role for us to play. You know, there is a role for us to play. I don't think we can depend on the government to do everything.

They should do, they should always do more. But I always say my foundation should always do more. You know, there's always more that we can do. And I think that's a great way for our citizens to participate, you know, in helping our service members through difficult times. There's thousands of nonprofits out there that are in this space. And if they weren't here, we'd have a catastrophe. If it was all up to the government, massive catastrophe. So it's a good thing that these nonprofits are out there.

It's a good thing for people to be aware of all the different nonprofits. and not all of them. You can't. There's too many. But, you know, be aware of some good nonprofits, especially in your area. What are the veteran support organizations in your area that are helping your local veterans? If every citizen in this country took some responsibility for, you know,

reaching out to the men and women who have served our country and sacrificed for our country, just to help them through their day, you know, maybe just go by, groceries. Maybe somebody's deployed, and that spouse is left at home, and the car breaks down, and she's got four kids, and she's trying to manage everything like that. You know, just a little helping hand can help that person a lot. And people always ask me, who should I support, what should I do? I always say, look in your own neighborhood, look in your own community. Are there veterans and military families and first responders who are struggling? Can they use a helping hand. It'll make you feel really good if you do it. You don't have to write the big check.

You can do something very personal. Personal touches matter. I started by just a lot of personal touches going out to the war zones and patting people on the back and shaking hands and taking pictures and sitting down and having dinner with them. That meant a lot to them. Just to know that somebody cares. Know that somebody in the country who's benefiting from what they're doing to protect and defend this that in matters to that person. And I try to left our service members know that their service manners and to let our fellow citizens know that there are a lot of ways that you can show your appreciation. But yeah, anything else, do you guys have any more questions?

I was asked specifically to ask you about the Snow Mall Express. Yeah, so this is the families of our fallen heroes program that we have. have. It was, it started 20 years ago by some folks who wanted to, some veterans in California, they wanted to do some, you know, this is 2006. You know, we've been in Iraq now for three years. We've been in Afghanistan for five. We lost, you know, we're losing folks. a lot of children, you know, struggling and suffering. And so they wanted to do something that would help the kids through difficult times. So right before Christmas time, they raised some money and they were able to bring, you know, a bunch of families with kids to Anaheim to Disneyland.

and all expense paid. Southwest Airlines was involved, helping to provide some transportation. They did one event where they brought the kids and they had, they videotaped it. And right after that event, which was December of 06, they contacted me. I was shooting CSI, New York.

And they, you know, they knew that I was active. and doing a lot, going overseas and that kind of thing. They contacted me and said, we want to do this again next year, and would you get involved in it? And they showed me the videotape of the children. These are all children that are lost my mom or dad. And it was very moving. You know, it was very moving in me.

And I had actually been involved with the Intrepid Foundation, wanting to try to do something for children of our fallen heroes. That never quite got started and got off the ground. So all of a sudden this event comes, and I'm seeing all these happy kids of Disney Lane. And I said, I want to help that. So I got involved in next year. I volunteered to go to the event at Disneyland,

brought my band, donated my band, played a concert for the kids, and it was so moving, you know, you see these kids and they got t-shirts and their fallen here old dad is on the t-shirt or buttons or whatever. And they're right in front of me, these little kids. And I'm playing music for them. I'm trying to lift them up, make them feel good, never having fun. And so the following year, I went back again, did, got involved again.

Then it moved to Dallas because American Airlines got involved, started providing all the transportation for the kids to go to Disneyland. Now we're going to move it to Dallas, which is the hub of American Airlines. And they have a lot of connections at Dallas and all this stuff. So we're going to move the event to Dallas. We're going to do it in Dallas. For nine years, it was in Dallas. And I brought my band back every year to play for the kids and to help.

help them true. It was growing a lot of families of lost loved ones. I have a great relationship with Disney World narrating that park ride and being in the movies and all that stuff. Narrating at Disney World a show called The Candlelight Processional Life. I was doing that every year at Disney World. So I said, the next thing we should do with these kids is take them to Disney World. And so I went to Disney and had a meeting with them, and we got them on board. We're going to bring a thousand kids there. We're going to have this Disney on board, right? So after that, it was going to cost a lot more money.

So we brought it into the Gary Sinise Foundation as a program of the Gary Sinise Foundation. So we have very vigorous programs to support the family. of our fallen heroes, that particular program is really focused on the children, but we support the spouses and, you know, we support parents of fallen heroes. We're getting involved in, you know, we're involved in so many different things. In fact, today, we have, we have, what we call it, a city adventure going. You might have seen the balloons out in the hallway and everything like then. So we have a city adventure going where we're bringing in spouses of fallen heroes. And we treat them to, you know, two or three days of fun in Nashville.

We show them some love. Just trying to help them through these difficult times. You know, I understand grief. It's a difficult thing to deal with when you've lost a loved one. And, you know, we, these are people who are, given a lot for our country, and we want to do something for the families that are left behind. It is awesome to see how much you do for the veteran communities of families. It is one thing, like, we were blessed enough because of the amazing community to donate

towards the Gary Sinise Foundation. We're going to continue, like, every year for November when we do our pretty much the entire months, we'll make a few shirts, and then 100% of profits we make that month. We just write it off and just donate everything. we make and we do it for special needs and veterans. So we've done as well as our own money too. Like usually if we have a gold, we come slightly shy of that or something like that. We'll throw in our own, our own.

You guys are in San Antonio? Yes, sir. You're sorry. So I'll be at Bamsey next month. Oh, really? Yeah. Come say hi. I have my band at Bamsy next month.

We do one of the programs that we have is we do these festivals at military hospital. I started doing it in San Diego in 2012. and we do it at the hospital. We'll be at Fort Belvoir. We were in Naval Medical Center in San Diego at the end of January, and we're at Banff on the 17th. Right? Yeah, 17th of April.

I've got a lot to go from on over. True, I would love to. Love to consider a lot of good friends that are trained. A lot of people don't realize how much of Army medical, pretty much all of Army Medical is out of Fort Sam Houston, BFC, all that in San Antonio. Yeah, this, we sent about It's during the day, we call it our Invincible Spirit Festival.

So I'll visit the hospital and then I come outside, play a concert. We have food, moon bounces for the kids, rock climbing walls. You know, I mean, we set up a festival outside. So they look forward to it every year. Come on over and see what we're doing. We would love to help out with that. That would be awesome. I'd love to.

Yeah, because we would put out, I mean, even our post. If we can help with any of that, let us know. That's one space we want. I was in touch with my team. They know that's, I have a concert at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar in California on the 15th and then on the 17th I'm in San Antonio. Dan, band. The band is a rockin band, yeah.

Is that up the name though? Is that? Which is Dan Baugh? Yeah, it's really good. Is that still just like your passion, it's just the music side of things? The music is, is, that's kind of my escape, you know. It's really, you know, I don't go. play golf, I don't go on trips other than for the mission.

And so when I'm playing a concert, that's really my release. You know, I pay the band. I've had this band for over 20 years. I play for free, and it's just part of the mission. That's awesome. And then if we can, just a quick shout out to your son, that's where you guys can. I can really because that last album he did that you didn't know about.

Well, my son was, he was a great musician and great composer. You know, he was my number two drummer, so if my guy couldn't play, I would always ask Mack to sit in and play with us. He was just really exceptionally good. There's a picture of him over there when he's nine years old with his drumsticks. It's the first day I put him on the drum set. It's over there, and I took a picture of him. He became just a great drummer, went to USC music school, wrote a lot of music, ended up working for the foundation, writing music for the foundation.

He got very, very sick and with a rare cancer called Cordoma. And he fought it for five and a half years. And in the last year of his life, he hadn't been thinking about music at all. And he said, Dad, there was a piece of music I wrote in college. I never finished it, and I've been thinking about it. And I think I'd like to try to finish him. And he was paralyzed from the chest down from the cancer. He was in a hospital bed.

And he finished the piece of music. They ended up going into the studio, recording it with an orchestra. You can see it at Max Sene's YouTube. You can see the recording sessions for the first record. he called the record Resurrection and Revival. He ended up doing a whole album, 10 pieces of music, and the album went to press the week that he died. So he never got to see that album.

But that album, that's a picture of my grandfather and his grave grandfather on the cover. And one of the things Mac did for the foundation was kind of resurrect and revive things in my archive, old photographs that I have from World War I, World War II, and he loved that picture of my grandfather from World War I, and he brought it back to life and put it on the cover, and he brought that piece of music that he wrote in college back to life,

you know, resurrected it and revived it. After he died, I started to find all this other music that he wrote. So that's when I did Resurrection and Revival Part 2. and then, believe it or not, I started a five even more after I finished that record. So we're putting the finishing touches on Resurrection and Revival Part 3 right now, and that'll be available in June 31 pieces of music are on this record. Wow.

I thought I found everything he wrote when I did the second record, But then I found all these little things and just all these melodies they created. And so we've taken them and brought them to life. And I was listening to it on the way over here today. And it's great. You can download both Resurrection and Revival and Resurrection and Revival Part 2. You can buy the albums, the vinals, all the proceeds, go to the Gary Seneese Foundation. Because that's what Mac wanted.

He said, Dad, I want to make some vinyl if we ever sell them. I want the proceeds to go to the foundation. And where people find that, if they want to buy the vinals or anything? The vinals right at garrisonese Foundation.org. Perfect. The vinals are available. We've sold over 9,000 copies. People buy them.

They don't even have a record player. But it's, you know, they buy the album and then they go get a record player. Because the music is very special. When you watch the YouTube videos, there's a piece called, Arctic Circles. And it's an orchestral piece that Mac Road. That's the piece that he was thinking about that he never finished in college.

And he finished it. And it's stunning. It's a stunningly beautiful piece. That led to a whole album. Then I found more. And now I found even more. So between all three albums, it's about 60 pieces of music.

So wow. Yeah. That he created. When does the third one drop in where it will also in the exact? same look at. Yeah, you guys are getting a scoop. If I haven't told anybody I'm out, and it'll be cute. That third album is coming out in June.

Yeah, we're going to have it. It goes to press next week. So we're, you know, we got a couple of months where they'll print it and get it all ready, you know, get all the artwork done and everything like that. And then it'll, it'll be available on our website in early June. Thanks, brother. Any last pieces of wisdom for you? for the audience out there before we clove this out? I always say that, well, we can, I believe that we can never do enough for the men and women

to serve our country, protect our cities, you know, run into burning buildings, try to save people they don't know, all these different things. We can never do enough for them, but we can always try to do a little more. And that's what I'm trying to do here is just find ways that we can continue to do more, that we can continue to inspire young people and motivate young people to learn a little bit more about

why it's important that we have defenders out there protecting our country, you know, and that we're lucky to happen. So all your veterans here, you know, I really, My hat's off to you. I thank you. This foundation was created because of, you know, what you've done for a country. And I don't take it for granted.

Surely appreciate it. But then you, talking to you guys. All you, thank you. All you's guys. Brain. Hey, let's not even cook. You got a whole crowd over it.

Don't embarrass me in front of Gary. You want to close this out? Thank you guys for joining the unsubscribe podcast. I was joined today by Eli Double Taff, the fat electrician, Gary Sneez, Brandon Herrera, myself, donor operator. Thank you so much for being here. We love you. Yeah.

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