Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service
Gary Sinise
PROLOGUE
Stunned
I am not completely prepared for what awaits me on the other side of the doors.
On this August day in 1994, the wind is blowing hot and humid throughout Chicago. Event organizers have told me more than twenty-five hundred disabled veterans are waiting for me in the air-conditioned ballroom at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. I’m here to receive an award at the national convention of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), an organization whose motto is “Fulfilling our promises to the men and women who served.” This is my first time at the convention. I’ve met disabled veterans before, one or two at a time, but never so many gathered in one spot. I imagine I’ll walk into a sea of wheelchairs, crutches, and prosthetics, but I don’t really know what to expect.
Organizers have led me down a back way through the clatter of the hotel’s kitchen. We’ve sidestepped waiters and food prep staff and approached the ballroom doors from the kitchen entrance. Now we wait for the cue to come in. I can hear my voice being broadcast throughout the auditorium. Forrest Gump, the movie where I play a character named Lieutenant Dan Taylor, has been out for about six weeks, and event organizers are showing clips in the ballroom. At this point in my career, I’ve been in lots of plays and on a few TV shows, including American Playhouse broadcasts of Sam Shepard’s True West and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I’ve even had a few credited roles in movies: Of Mice and Men, A Midnight Clear, Jack the Bear, The Stand. But I’ve never had a role that’s received as much attention as Lieutenant Dan.
It’s a new experience. The movie has already exploded in popularity, and more and more I’m getting recognized in public. As a result, the DAV has kindly provided me with a suite at the hotel and kept me away from the crowds.
Lieutenant Dan is a disabled Vietnam veteran who loses his legs in combat. He carries terrible guilt after leading his platoon into an ambush where many of his men are killed or wounded, and he wishes that instead of surviving with his injury he’d been killed along with his men. His post-traumatic stress1 buries him in alcohol abuse and dark isolation. His friend, Forrest Gump, also a Vietnam veteran, is a good-hearted and simple minded man who receives the Medal of Honor for saving Lieutenant Dan’s life, as well as the lives of other members of their platoon.
Through the ballroom doors, I hear the scene that’s being shown. The characters’ combat days are over, and Private Gump (played by Tom Hanks) reunites with me, his lieutenant, in New York City in 1971 during the holiday season. Christmas is in the air, and I’m confined to my wheelchair. My hair has grown to my shoulders and is unkempt. I set down my whiskey bottle long enough to probe Forrest with a sneering question:
LIEUTENANT DAN: Have you found Jesus yet, Gump?
FORREST: I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.
LIEUTENANT DAN: [Chuckles wryly.] That’s all these cripples down at the VA ever talk about. Jesus this and Jesus that. Have I found Jesus? They even had a priest come and talk to me. He said God is listening, but I have to help myself, and if I accept Jesus into my heart, then I’ll get to walk beside him in the kingdom of heaven. [Enraged, Lieutenant Dan throws the bottle, glares at Forrest, and shouts:] Did you hear what I said? WALK beside him in the kingdom of heaven. Well, kiss my crippled a**. God is listening? What a crock of s**t.
FORREST: [Quietly] I’m going to heaven, Lieutenant Dan.
LIEUTENANT DAN: [Bitterly] Oh? Ah, well, before you go, why don’t you get your a** down to the corner and get us another bottle of ripple.
In the ballroom, I hear dry chuckles from the audience. A clip from later in the film begins. Lieutenant Dan has found his way to Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and goes to work on Forrest’s shrimping boat. One dark night, a squall comes up, a real act of God. All the other shrimping boats sensibly return to port, but Forrest and Lieutenant Dan stay out at sea. During the storm’s fiercest moments, Lieutenant Dan climbs to the top of the mainmast, shakes his fist at the sky, and yells out at the wind and the waves: “You call this a storm? . . . I’m right here, come and get me! You’ll never . . . sink . . . this . . . boat!” In an utter showdown with Providence, he vents his frustration, disappointment, grief, and rage.
In the next scene the storm is over, and the sun is out. Forrest’s boat is the only one that’s survived the hurricane. Lieutenant Dan sits on the edge of the boat. He’s finally let go of the anger, fear, and resentment over what has happened to him. He looks his former private in the eyes and says quietly, “Forrest, I never thanked you for saving my life.” After a smile to his friend, he hops into the calm waters of the ocean and floats on his back into the distance, finally at peace, the sun breaking through the clouds as if lighting the way forward. In a voice-over Forrest says, “He never actually said so, but I think he made his peace with God.”
As the clips continue in the ballroom, I think about how this character seems to have resonated with a lot of people already, especially those in the veteran community. Shortly after the movie’s release, Gary Weaver, a Vietnam vet who worked for the DAV, invited me to the DAV convention so that the organization could present me with an award for “an honest portrayal of a catastrophically injured veteran who served his country.” That’s why the DAV has brought me to this ballroom at the Hilton—to honor me for my “hard work” on the film.