By Lillie Liska
FORREST GUMP star Gary Sinise will keep supporting veterans, first responders and their families even as their needs change.
“We’re always going to change with the needs as the needs shift,” Sinise, who founded the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2011 to serve our nation’s heroes, said in an interview with Fox News. “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.”
Today, he and his foundation are presenting a key to a “specially adapted, mortgage-free home” to U.S. Army Captain (Ret.) Tyson Quink and his family, marking the foundation’s 99th gifted home.
Related: Why Gary Sinise Commits His Life to Honoring Our Nation’s Heroes
The Gary Sinise Foundation reported that Quink lost both his legs below the knee in an IED explosion while leading his platoon in Kandahar.
“I had just left a combat zone where I was responsible for my soldiers’ lives, and now I was dependent on everyone around me,” he recalled. But despite the challenges he’s faced, Quink returned to “West Point to guide and mentor the next generation of soldiers.”
“What Gary’s done for this Foundation for so many veterans and family members is amazing. There’s not enough words I can say to say thank you,” he said.
For Sinise’s foundation, providing homes for service members like Quink is just one of many avenues they have to give back.
“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,” Sinise said. “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.
“Those needs have shifted somewhat, but yet, within the veteran community, there are always going to be ways that we can support,” Sinise emphasized.
Along with custom home building, the foundation provides support to military members, first responders and their families through education, Sinise’s Lt. Dan Band and honoring the families of fallen heroes, among other programs.
“…we’ve helped thousands of our nation’s heroes and their families in their time of need,” Sinise said of his work. “I encourage you to read more about the Foundation’s rich history, the astonishing personal stories of our heroes, and the critical outreach efforts we make every day to serve them. Most of all, I hope you’ll join me in this important mission. We’ve only just begun.”
Like Sinise, we should all take time today to thank our veterans for their sacrifice.
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