Disabled troops inspire Gary Sinise to give back
(CBS News) Actor Gary Sinise has spent decades performing on stage and screen, but he's probably best known for a single role: Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. In the film, he portrays an Army officer who loses both legs in Vietnam, a character that made Sinise something of a patron saint to real-life amputees. Inspired by their heroism, Sinise co-founded the Lt. Dan Band to entertain U.S. troops and raise money for gravely wounded warriors. David Martin speaks with Sinise about his efforts, and with the veterans and their families whose lives he's changed.
To learn more about the Gary Sinise Foundation -- including how you can help -- click here.
The following script is from "The Role of a Lifetime" which originally aired on May 13, 2012. David Martin is the correspondent. Mary Walsh and Tadd Lascari, producers.
Everybody, myself included, will tell you meeting the wounded from America's wars is a life-changing experience. That's certainly what happened to the actor Gary Sinise. You may know him as Detective Mac Taylor, the character he plays on the CBS series "CSI: NY," or as "Lieutenant Dan," the gung-ho Army officer who loses both legs in Vietnam in the film classic "Forrest Gump."
But you probably don't know he plays bass guitar in a band named after Lt. Dan that will give nearly 50 concerts this year to raise money for wounded warriors or to just plain entertain troops and their families. Sinise has been acting professionally ever since he was in high school. He's played presidents and astronauts, criminals and cops, but it was Lt. Dan that turned into the role of a lifetime.
[Announcer: Let's hear it for Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band!]
Since his first USO tour to Iraq in 2003, Gary Sinise has entertained nearly a quarter million American troops and their families.
Gary Sinise: We've been all over the world. I bet you we've been on more bases than you have.
But there was a time when he couldn't even get the USO to return his calls.
Gary Sinise: I'm not sure the USO knew who I was back then because I kept calling and I kept trying to reach them.
So he dropped a name the USO was sure to recognize.
[Lt. Dan: I'm Lieutentant Dan Taylor and welcome to Fort Platoon.]
Gary Sinise: I'm the guy that played Lt. Dan, if they don't know who Gary Sinise is.
Lt. Dan Taylor only appears in Forrest Gump for about 20 minutes but with the exception of Forrest himself, played by Tom Hanks, he is its best known character -- an over the top Army officer who sets out to win glory in Vietnam and ends up losing his legs.
[Forrest Gump: Lt Dan!!]
He is mired in booze and depression and headed straight for the bottom, only to be saved by the invincible innocence and optimism of Forrest Gump.
[Lt. Dan: Goddamn bless America]
Gary Sinise: He's angry at God and angry at life and all of that, but he's able to put that all in perspective and move on, and at the end of the movie he's rich and he's-- and he's married and he's standing up on two legs and he's a whole different guy.
That was 1994, when movies about Vietnam vets didn't have happy endings.
[Lt. Dan: I thought I'd try out my sea legs.
Forrest Gump: But you ain't got no legs, Lt. Dan.]
Gary Sinise: It's, I think, probably the first time that a Vietnam veteran had been portrayed as somebody who could overcome his obstacles and his challenges and move on from the Vietnam War.
Today, Lt. Dan lives on in the form of the Lt. Dan Band and the concerts it gives to raise money for wounded troops like Marine Corporal Juan Dominguez who lost both legs and an arm to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2010.
David Martin: You were not expected to live.
Juan Dominguez: Died five times.
David Martin: Died five times?
Juan Dominguez: Blood loss. I had to have three transfusions, blood transfusions. Instead of reviving me with air they had to revive me with blood.
[Juan Dominguez: This is the one that's a pain in the butt.]
Dominguez is now back at his home base in California, spending much of his time in physical therapy struggling to walk again. It's a slow and painful process, but he's not going through it alone. He's engaged to Alexis Gomez whom he met after he was wounded. They currently live in a cramped townhouse where everything is more difficult than it needs to be.
Juan Dominguez: I can't really get to-- (opens cabinet door) because my wheelchair is so bulky.
But later this year they plan to move to a new home custom built to Dominguez' needs which is why a movie star asked the City Council of Temecula, California, if he could put on a concert to raise money for the house.
[Gary Sinise: I hope that you will grant us permission to come here to Temecula and to celebrate the service of Juan Dominguez by bringing the community together to raise money though this particular concert so that he knows that he's got a community that's welcoming and that's going to look out for him for many years to come. Thank you very much.]
David Martin: You must have people who would do that for you. Why do you go to a city council meeting and try to get a permit?
Gary Sinise: Well, wanted to make it hard for 'em to say no.
They said, "Yes." And so before the concert Dominguez - still a drummer despite his wounds - was back at his townhouse practicing for the show.
Gary Sinise: Well, guess what? We have a special treat. Let's bring Juan Dominguez right out here. He's gonna play with us.
Sinise and his band of professional musicians are teamed up with a foundation honoring a New York City fireman who died on 9/11 to raise money to build houses for Dominguez and nine other wounded veterans this year. But that's the easy part.
Gary Sinise: Let's say we build somebody a house and now they've got a home to live in. Well, what happens then, you know, when you have no arms and no legs? Do you, you know, where's your job? Are you just going to stay in that house and hide?
The real point of this concert is to make sure that doesn't happen.
Gary Sinise: You need community support if you're going to make it and that's why coming into these towns around the country and playing these concerts to make sure that the town and the community understands what we're dealing with here. Somebody you see on television you know every week has come to your small community because it's important to support this wounded warrior who lives among you.
[Gary Sinise at concert: Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.]
It always comes back to that role of a lifetime that made him something of a patron saint for amputees.
David Martin: Is it the Lt. Dan thing that works for them?
Gary Sinise: Sometimes it's Lt. Dan now because they recognize me as somebody that maybe knows what they're going through because I played a guy who's lost his legs.
[Gary Sinise, acting: Sister Blanche cannot be annoyed with business details right now.]
By the time he played Lt. Dan, Sinise was already an accomplished actor, having founded the Steppenwolf Theatre in his hometown of Chicago and starred in productions from "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "Of Mice and Men."
[Lt. Dan: That was my destiny and you cheated me out of it.]
But it was Lt. Dan who changed the course of his life.
Gary Sinise: The movie opened July 4, 1994 and about two weeks after it opened I got this call from the Disabled American Veterans. They wanted to give me something for playing Lt. Dan, for playing a disabled veteran.
The award is now on the wall of his offices in L.A.
David Martin: That's talking very specifically about Lt. Dan. "Nor will we forget that character's heroic struggle to rise above his anger to be-- to become not only successful but an unequivocally good human being."
Gary Sinise: There were 3,000 people in this ballroom. Those that could stand were all standing, giving me an ovation, and I was, you know, I, I, was so moved by it and really caught off guard by the emotion.
David Martin: What do you think it was that so moved you? Is it real amputees applauding a pretend amputee?
Gary Sinise: I'm an actor, I'm not a, I, I play parts, you know. These people lived the part that I played and were wounded and severely wounded, some of them, and, and they were applauding me for playing a part.
As of May 1st there were 1,459 amputees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 439 of them lost more than one limb. Dominguez is one of 39 who lost three.
Juan Dominguez: I basically thought I was worthless until one of the quad amputees that was there, he was walking around like it was nothing.
That was Marine Corporal Todd Nicely one of five surviving quadruple amputees.
Todd Nicely: I have a feeling 10 years down the road I'm not even gonna remember what it was like to have arms and legs.
He and his wife Crystal are about to move into a new house being built just for them in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri - paid for in part with money raised by Sinise at a concert last Memorial Day.
David Martin: What does this house mean for you?
Todd Nicely: For me, it means getting my life back, you know, being able to do a lot of the things on my own.
It's impossible to imagine what the Nicelys have endured since the day in March of 2010 when he stepped on a booby-trapped bridge in Afghanistan.
Todd Nicely: I remember thinking, "If I just keep breathing, I'll make it home to my wife, so..."
David Martin: You know, you can't sacrifice much more for your country and live to tell about it.
Todd Nicely: Yeah, that's true.
In addition to his devastating wounds, they had to deal with a sometimes insensitive military culture.
Crystal Nicely: Their superiors, they look at them like they should be able to function like they did before, like we had an instance where a gentleman got mad because Todd didn't shave his face. You know that's probably not something that should be on your priority list of things that Todd should have to do.
Todd Nicely: Living without hands is the hardest thing I think I've had to . . .
David Martin: You're clean shaven this morning.
Todd Nicely: Yeah, that took me awhile to learn how to do that. Before I had cuts all over my face. I'd be bleeding all over.
There may always be frustrations for the Nicelys, but at least he will not have to worry about stairs in their new home. It will have its own elevator.
David Martin: When you get that, what difference is that going to make in the, the way you live in this house?
Todd Nicley: It's gonna make life 10 times easier.
Sinise set up his own foundation to help build homes for the severely wounded -- except triple amputee Bryan Anderson, who doesn't want one.
David Martin: You're not getting a smart home for yourself.
Bryan Anderson: No, I'm not.
David Martin: Why not?
Bryan Anderson: I'm good. Like, I get around just fine. I do everything I wanna do. I don't need it, so give it to somebody that would take it and I would feel guilty taking something away from somebody that could actually need it.
But that hasn't stopped him from becoming friends with Sinise, a relationship he literally fell into when he stumbled while trying out his new prosthetic legs in the physical therapy room at Walter Reed.
Bryan Anderson: I just put my arms out and I landed on the first person that I could grab and then I look up I'm like, "Oh--holy crap, it's Gary Sinise. "And he looks at me, he's like "Holy crap, the real Lt. Dan," and I'm just like, "No, no, no, no, you'll always be Lt. Dan." And he's like come over here, let's have a talk. And then we just started talking about every day things and it was like he was talking to me as a person and not just a wounded soldier.
Anderson is definitely a person. And one of the writers on "CSI: NY" was inspired to turn him into a character - a very unlikely murder suspect.
[Bryan Anderson, on "CSI: NY": What do I think? I'm not going to let you stand here and accuse me of murder.]
Gary Sinise: The gag was we hid him from everybody and then we showed him and he gets himself up on his legs by himself.
A gymnast before he joined the Army, Anderson carries on like any other 30-something. The last thing you would call him is wheelchair bound.
David Martin: You're obviously in a very good place for a guy that has sacrificed as much as you have.
Bryan Anderson: I am in a very good place, yes.
David Martin: Do you think Gary Sinise is responsible for any of that?
Bryan Anderson: Gary's responsible for the beginning. I've done a lot on my own for myself. Gary was the one to show me that I can do everything -- that it is possible. He really showed me that I can still do anything; it doesn't matter that I'm in a chair. If this guy can see that, why can't I?
It's his role of a lifetime and it keeps Sinise on the road most weekends.
[Gary Sinise, in concert: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank all of you for what you do for our country.]
Gary Sinise: It's a part of my life. It's a part of my, what I think is important and what makes me feel that I can contribute.
David Martin: You're a big shot actor, but this is what makes you feel important?
Gary Sinise: It gets you outta yourself, you know, it puts everything in perspective real good.