Sinise to Newsmax: Lt. Dan Band Concert to ‘Welcome Home’ Vietnam POWs

Actor Gary Sinise, best known for his role as “Lt. Dan” in the movie “Forrest Gump,” will be on hand in Washington, D.C., during Memorial Day weekend for his annual concerts honoring the nation’s veterans, including a special show May 26 to “Welcome Home” 11 Vietnam prisoners of war released at the end of the war in 1973.

“We’re featuring our Vietnam veterans and particularly, the return of the POWs that happened in February and March of 1973,” Sinise said during “Saturday Report.” 

“It’s 50 years since they came home, we’re going to have 11 POWs in the National Memorial Day concert, but I wanted to do a little something extra to recognize this 50th anniversary. So, we put this concert together.”

Sponsored by the Gary Sinise Foundation, which provides aid and services to veterans nationwide, the free “Welcome Home: A Celebration of Vietnam Veterans” concert by his Lt. Dan Band is scheduled for May 26 at Constitution Hall.

“It’s a free concert and we want as many Vietnam veterans to come as possible,” he said. “You can go to garysinisefoundation.org and you can order tickets. The tickets are free, but it’s going fast, and we feel certain that we’re going to fill up Constitution Hall. So, get your tickets, especially if you’re a Vietnam veteran. Come and let us celebrate you.”

Sinise said he comes from a family of veterans who have served in the military during both World War I and World War II, as well as Korea and Vietnam.

“I would probably give the Vietnam veterans on my wife’s side of the family a little more of the credit for kind of opening my eyes back in the in the 1970s and 1980s, when we met, and I started to learn from them about what it was like for them to go off to war to Vietnam, and then come home.”

Sinise said that during that time the nation was bitterly divided on the war and “really shut the door” on returning veterans.

“What happened to our Vietnam veterans, when 50 years ago, when they came home from war and the nation was divided, it really shut the door on them,” he said. “We want to make sure that that doesn’t happen again to our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, or anybody serving our country. I feel that there’s a lot of lot of folks out there that kind of were motivated by that. Once we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, they wanted to make sure that we took care of our service members when they came home.”

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