 Hello DAV, this is Dan Clare. In these days of the pandemic, it's important for veterans to know that you are not alone. There are people out there rooting for you, and we have a really good friend joining us today, a star both in our community in terms of advocacy for veterans and in terms of really being a star, a great movie, film, television, all over the place, star, Gary Sneese. Gary, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, thank you Dan, good to be with you. I hope it's looking okay here. Yeah, looking good, Gary. Yeah, you just finished your book over the last year, Grateful American. We are all so grateful for you and thank you so much for all you do for us. How have things been going since the book came out? Well, thanks for having me and hello to all my DAV pals out there. I love the DAV and it's been a privilege to be a part of it all these years. It was great when we got to do some book signings at the last convention. And, you know, I got to meet so many people up close before my concert and everything like that. So I hope everybody who got the book, I hope you like the book. The book's done very well. I understand from the publisher and from my agent that a good successful launch of a book can be anywhere around 25,000 copies sold and, you know, and the book has done over 160,000 copies. So I think we did real really well. If you haven't had a chance to get the book, it is also available on audio. I did the audio version and read my own book and people can give it a listen and fall asleep to me every night. Right around the time that Forrest Gump came out, you were in a great mini-series called The Stan based on the Stephen King book. Did you ever think that it might be coming partially true? Gosh, when we made The Stan, I mean, I'm sure, you know, that was a long time ago. We shot it in 1993. So it was just a year before I was introduced to the DAV, actually, and we shot that, that The Stan actually came out on television about two months before Forrest Gump came out in the theaters. I'm sure back then we discussed the potential of a virus spreading across the planet and what it would do. I mean, there's also the Stephen King aspects of The Stan, which is good and evil and darkness and kind of all the all the sort of surreal things that happen within it. But the reality is that there's always the patient zero. And when you look at what happens in The Stan, which is it's a virus that gets out in the United States from a lab and somebody, people start getting sick in the lab and one of the workers there decides to get out and he gets in his car and starts driving across the country to get away from it. And of course, he's infected and everywhere he goes, he infects people along the way and then it spreads across the entire planet. Well, there's he's patient zero in The Stan, but you can see how travel and he's traveling by car in The Stan travel for the coronavirus obviously was people getting on airplanes and traveling all around and not even knowing they had the virus. Well, that that was the case with the guy in The Stan, of course, until he got very, very sick. And then he meets me at the certain point. It's pretty interesting. I've thought about going back to watch The Stan, you know, but I think we're living it right now. So I didn't really have any, you know, any big desire to sit down and watch a mini series about a plague, you know, while we're going through a pretty serious virus that has spread across the planet and who would have thought, you know, but it's it's always been possible. These types of things have happened in the history of the world. Before we have some very, very good scientists and very good people out there that are trying to solve the problem. I think we will get it solved and, you know, life will be maybe a bit different afterwards. Quite a bit different afterwards for a lot of people who've been struggling with their businesses shutting down and not knowing where to turn. But, you know, when you when you look at look at things, you know, the world and the planet has survived some pretty, pretty intense challenges throughout the course of human history. None, none more troublesome than, you know, 85 million people, 90 million people being lost, you know, 75 years ago in World War Two when the entire planet was infected with war. And entire cities were turned to rubble and, you know, millions and millions of people were were killed, lost their lives. And millions more were disabled. But the planet came back from that. Our country came back from that roaring back. And I think we will get this under control and come roaring back. That's interesting. Just the other day I saw your your 75th celebration of VE Day. Great job on that. This has affected, of course, all the work that your charity does and all the work that we do together just next week. We were scheduled to have a Boulder Crest event that it's just not going to happen. And that leaves a lot of veterans kind of left in the lurch. Do you have any words of encouragement for people? Just so folks know about what we do with with Boulder Crest. And I'll give a little bit of the history on it. I met Ken who started Boulder Crest. Ken Faulk back in around 2014 or so. And he was a former EOD Navy guy who did very, very well in business and had acreage out in Blumont, Virginia. And he decided to make a retreat for our service members. He built all these cabins. And I went, you know, after I met him, I said, I want to come and see what you're doing. And I went there while they were building it hadn't opened yet. And in the back of my mind, I thought that for the purposes of Gary Sinise Foundation in future, doing something in partnership with Boulder Crest with regards to our wounded service members and service members struggling with post-traumatic stress, this would be a great place to do it. And then thinking that I was in Florida at one point, I drove over to a Popka and sat down with Jim Cersely. And I said, Jim, what would you think about, you know, teaming up some of our veterans through the DAV who have been living with their injuries for many, many years, who have become successful in business, gone on, done well, found a way around their challenges physically and moved on with life and who have successfully lived with these issues for 40 or 50 years? What would you think about pairing up some of those folks with some of our younger veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan struggling with similar things? And Jim thought it was a good idea, proposed it to DAV. And now the three entities, Gary Sinise Foundation, Boulder Crest and DAV got together and we started doing retreats at Boulder Crest. So these are retreats and now Boulder Crest has opened another retreat outside of Tucson. So we have a couple of spaces and now we're expanding it around the country in different ways. So it really is a thing that requires travel, you know, we bring our veterans together and we send them to the retreat for six or seven days. And they go through a very serious program, very beneficial program, as so many I've heard from so many of the veterans that have come out of there, spending time with our DAV members and spending time with the Boulder Crest staff and just learning a lot, going through a lot of healing through that process. That's been very beneficial. And now, of course, we can't send them to the retreats because of what's going on with coronavirus. But again, I think we will come out on the other end at some point and we will get back to business and we will look forward to not only the Boulder Crest retreats, but conventions and events and all the different types of things that we do together to make people's lives better. And to be able to let them know how much they're appreciated and how we want them to be okay. We want them to move on with life. We want them to know there's a grateful America out there that supports them. And that's what we do at the Gary Cines Foundation. DAV has been all over that for 90 plus years. So it's been very, and that's what Ken is doing at Boulder Crest. So very good partnership there and I'll look forward to that picking up again. It looks like that might be expanding with Travis Mills getting involved. He's quite a hero. Well, Travis, I've known Travis since he was at Walter Reed back in 2012 and Travis is a quadruple amputee, lost both his legs, both his arms in Afghanistan. I heard about Travis because we had begun building homes for some of the quadruple amputees and triple amputees way back when. And so on a trip to Walter Reed, I looked for him and contacted him. We became friends. We ended up building a house for Travis and his family up in Maine. He became an ambassador for my foundation, the Gary Cines Foundation, and you gave me a call recently asking if I could put you in touch with Travis. He's an inspirational guy, a wonderful guy, and he's taken his circumstance, much like many of our inspirational veterans who take their challenges and turn it, spin it into gold. And he has done that. He's not let his amputations and losing his arms and legs slow him down in one bit. He created Travis Mills Foundation. He's got a retreat up in Maine where he's been bringing our wounded there for healing and their families. I think it'll be a great match for him to do some speaking with the DAV and to participate in some of the DAV work. And I'm grateful that the DAV is going to support Travis and some of the work that he's doing. He's a great guy, been a great ambassador for the Gary Cines Foundation, great friend, really inspirational guy. Hey, Gary, can you tell me what else you have going on with your charity right now? I would like everybody to know that in spite of the coronavirus and what's going on with COVID-19 and all that, there's a couple of things that I want you to know about. You can go to the Gary Cines Foundation website and see what we're doing with a campaign that we launched right after things started shutting down. We wanted to play a role in supporting the people that were fighting this fight. At the Gary Cines Foundation, we launched the emergency COVID-19 combat service initiative. We're taking in donations and we're passing them on all across the country in various ways to help people who are fighting this fight. So check out the Gary Cines Foundation there. And in spite of this virus, what we normally do on Memorial weekend in front of the Capitol, I'm the co-host of the National Memorial Day concert on PBS Sunday night before Memorial Day. We can't do it live this year, but we are doing a show and we're going to put together a wonderful show for you. I've actually shot a few things with my co-host, Joe Montaigne, so tune in May 24th, Sunday, May 24th. Eastern 7th Central on PBS to watch the National Memorial Day concert. I encourage you to do that. Of course, we'll be highlighting some great stories from the past that we've had on past shows. And we're going to be celebrating the first responders and healthcare workers that are out there fighting this fight for us. Tune in May 24th. All right. Thank you, Gary. Thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. Thank you. Take care, Dan.