Chicago, Illinois.
It was 1997 when Gary Sinise and Kimo Williams first met and worked together on the Steppenwolf Theatre production of Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams was hired by director Terry Kinney to compose the score for the play and Sinise, a co founder of Steppenwolf along with Terry Kinney, was playing the role of Stanley Kowalski. It was during the technical rehearsals for the play that Gary and Kimo began to discuss their love for music and after learning of Gary's talents on the bass, Kimo invited him to his home for a jam session. Over the next few years, whenever possible, these two pals would play together with other Chicago area musicians and in 2003, as Gary began what has turned out to be an extraordinary commitment to the USO, it became clear that those early jam sessions had laid the foundation for what would become The Lieutenant Dan Band.
Following one of his many trips overseas to visit those serving our country, Gary asked the USO if they would allow him to take a band with him on a tour. The USO agreed, the band began rehearsing and in February of 2004, The Lieutenant Dan Band hit the road on their first overseas USO tour to Korea, Singapore and Diego Garcia. Since those early sessions at Kimo’s house, a few gigs for the troops in the Chicago area in 2003, and that first overseas tour, in the past five years Gary and the band have played an average of 30-40 shows per year with a good 75% of those shows for USO, charities or benefits.
Click here to visit the site.
Related:
Operation Iraqi Children is a grass-roots program founded in early 2004 by actor Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, CSI: NY) and author Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit: An American Legend). Sinise and Hillenbrand created OIC to give concerned Americans a way to reach out to war-stricken Iraqi children and support American troops in their efforts to assist them. Since its inception, OIC has delivered to Iraq over 200,000 school supply kits, along with more than half a million toys and thousands of Arabic-language books, shoes, blankets, backpacks and sets of sports equipment, all of which have been distributed to Iraqi children by our troops. While our focus remains on Iraq, in recent months, OIC has extended its reach, sending shipments of school supplies to Afghanistan and the east African nation of Djibouti, where American troops are distributing them to children in need. Featured on CBS Nightly News, ABC News, and MSNBC, and in publications such as The Weekly Standard, O, and Parade, Operation Iraqi Children has been named by Reader's Digest magazine as one of “America's 100 Best.”
Whether you would like to make a simple monetary donation-100% of which will go to purchase supplies for children and offset shipping costs-build and send school supply kits yourself, or start a school supply kit drive in your community, you can help our troops foster goodwill between themselves and the communities they work in, and bring brighter futures to children in desperate need.
Visit the site to see how you can help.
No comments:
Post a Comment