Gary Sinise is determined to continue serving and honoring U.S. veterans, first responders and their families, despite the ever-changing cultural climate.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the Golden Globe Award-winning actor — who founded the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2011 — opened up about adapting to the needs of those who serve and understanding the important role mental health plays in today’s conversations around service and sacrifice.
“We’re always going to change with the needs as the needs shift,” said Sinise, whose foundation focuses on serving the nation and creating and supporting unique programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire, strengthen, and build communities. “I made a pretty flexible mission statement at the beginning that I wanted to be able to adapt as the needs changed, because I wanted to continue to help folks.”
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On Tuesday, Sinise and the foundation will present the keys to a specially adapted, mortgage-free home built for a wounded service member and their family. This marks the 99th home gifted to a family in need.
“Perhaps there will come a time, we hope, where there’s just fewer and fewer wounded service members that are in need of these adaptive homes that we build,” said Sinise. “That doesn’t mean that the Gary Sinise Foundation will cease to exist because that particular need, it’s not as urgent for us to build those. Maybe that will change, but it doesn’t mean that other needs won’t arise. And we want to always be flexible to shift with those needs.”
“When the foundation was launched, it was in the middle of the Iraq conflict. We still had many, many service members in Iraq. It was when the battles were raging. We still have many service members in Afghanistan now. So we were dealing with active duty, line of duty deaths. We were dealing with a lot of wounded coming home,” he continued.
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“Those needs have shifted somewhat, but yet, within the veteran community, there are always going to be ways that we can support,” he added.
Sinise — who is famous for his role as Lt. Dan in “Forrest Gump” — said that nonprofits can play a “pretty significant role” in helping veterans overcome residual effects, especially those who don’t have convenient resources.
“I don’t think the government can do everything, and we know that the government can’t. So while the VA system is a system that’s helped many, many veterans over the years and everything like that, when you’ve had 20 years of war, you have a lot of residual effects from 20 years of war. People that are in need … sometimes they’re hundreds of miles away from a VA center or something like that, but nonprofits can play a pretty significant role in helping them.”
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“The Gary Sinise Foundation will continue to shift and adapt as the needs change within the community,” he continued. “We are building pretty significant ongoing programs. We have a very vigorous first responder outreach that has shifted somewhat over the years as we discover where we can play a role, a more effective role in helping our firefighters and police officers and people that deal with these things.”
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“One thing people don’t really understand, and the more I’ve done this over the years, the more I’ve realized it is on the first responders side, people are getting hurt all the time around the country in little fire departments and little police departments, and I mean, people are getting hurt,” he added. “People are losing their lives. People are taking their lives. People are getting sick from too much smoke inhalation or whatever it is, and they have constant needs to be supported.”
As Sinise and the foundation continue to shift where need be, the “CSI: NY” alum said it’s important to understand the role mental health plays in the recovery and resilience of service members.
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“The important thing is that for someone who is struggling through a trauma or a series of traumas and really containing a lot and not really working to process that in a healthy way, so often our defenders, our veterans, our active duty folks, our firefighters, police officers, they don’t want to be vulnerable at all, and they don’t want to express that they can’t take it,” he said. “So they contain, and we have programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation that are trying to address that.”
“We support other programs that are really working hard to be proactive in addressing those needs so that we get out ahead of folks that may think that the only avenue for them is to take their own life,” he continued. “And sometimes they get to that point.”
“Then there are others that are left behind,” he added. “So there’s a domino effect of trauma that happens when somebody’s going through something bad and they don’t share it, they don’t express it, and then it catches everybody off guard. Quite often there are no signs when somebody take their life.”
For Sinise, the goal is simple.
“I want to always be able to provide the support that’s necessary as times change,” he said.
