What if every veteran and first responder dealing with physical wounds, posttraumatic stress, or despair could achieve the kind of recovery that Lieutenant Dan Taylor does in the iconic 1994 film Forrest Gump?

Shot up so badly during a firefight in the Vietnam War that he loses both legs, the character initially becomes an embittered alcoholic, angry with Forrest for breaking the Taylor family's dark tradition of dying in battle. It takes years—until the two men find success with the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company—before Lieutenant Dan regains his sense of purpose and finally thanks Forrest for saving his life.

Portrayed by Gary Sinise (who was nominated for an Academy Award for the role), Lieutenant Dan has become a potent symbol of a wounded warrior who overcomes psychological trauma.

Now Sinise is helping make that successful psychic journey available to thousands of veterans and first responders across the United States through his charitable organization, the Gary Sinise Foundation, and its newly established Avalon Network.

Raising more than $40 million a year since its founding in 2011, the Sinise Foundation supports the mental and emotional wellness of returning soldiers and emergency medical personnel. Through his work, Sinise seeks to remove the stigma surrounding posttraumatic stress (he doesn't use “disorder” because he says it suggests that the symptoms are permanent) and other psychological difficulties. “Posttraumatic stress is a natural human response to the trauma they have experienced,” the actor-director says. He also strives to create a sense of community: “No one experiencing hardships from symptoms related to posttraumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries should go it alone.”

This year Sinise reinforced his commitment by establishing the Avalon Network, with major funding from philanthropists Bernie Marcus and Arthur M. Blank, co-founders of Home Depot. One of Avalon's goals is to expand a treatment program developed at the University of Colorado's Marcus Institute for Brain Health to nine other medical centers around the country, including the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Tulane University in New Orleans, Jefferson University in Philadelphia, the University of Florida in Jacksonville, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The program offers three weeks of multidisciplinary treatment to eligible veterans and first responders—for free, including travel and lodging for them and their families. It is based on a model of care pioneered at the US government's National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE).

“We have a team of neurologists and other specialists—trauma counseling, sleep medicine, headache care, and more—all working together in one place,” explains neurologist James P. Kelly, MD, FAAN, executive director of the Marcus Institute. “Gary and his foundation have now joined forces with the Marcus Institute to bring this highly effective treatment to other areas of the country.”

In addition, the Avalon Network is making the work of the Bluemont, VA–based Boulder Crest Foundation available nationally. Boulder Crest runs a peer-based program that helps soldiers process their trauma. The program, Sinise says, “is based on the reality that these veterans have been through an intense, sometimes harrowing experience, and then return home to share that experience as well as their strengths and hope. In sharing their experience, they can be of service to others who also may be struggling."

Comprehensive Care

The idea for the Avalon Network came when Sinise flew out to Denver in 2018 to see what Dr. Kelly was doing at the Marcus Institute for Brain Health. After that visit, Sinise's foundation began sponsoring veterans to receive treatment at Marcus.

Dr. Kelly had been the founding director of NICoE, which provided intensive multifaceted care for active-duty military personnel who had sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or were experiencing post-traumatic stress. When the Marcus Institute was established in 2017, Dr. Kelly was recruited to replicate that model for veterans.

“Jim showed me around and it was incredibly impressive,” Sinise says. “I heard personal accounts from veterans who had been through the program and thought it was the best and most comprehensive medical treatment they had received in their lives.”

Most people who experience a mild TBI or concussion recover without extensive medical assistance, Dr. Kelly points out. “Our program is for the subset of individuals who continue to have serious psychological or life issues beyond the physical symptoms,” he says. “Depression and anxiety are huge in this group. If they're in close relationships, loved ones are often troubled by the individual's behavior, irritability, and inability to function. They have difficulty staying employed and often spiral down because of these problems.”

Dr. Kelly's team of specialists treats the full spectrum of symptoms related to posttraumatic stress, including sleep disturbance, headache, impaired balance, neurobehavioral changes, and substance abuse. Rather than providing the treatments over many months, the program brings the veterans in for three weeks of uninterrupted care.

“It's an integrated practice unit, the kind more commonly found in cancer care, where different specialists and support systems have one mission, in one location, to maximize patients' recovery,” Dr. Kelly says.

Extended Support

The Boulder Crest Foundation, meanwhile, seeks to foster what it calls “posttraumatic growth” through its Warrior PATHH, or Progressive Alternative Training for Healing Heroes. The program begins with a seven-day on-site initiation involving small groups (led in some cases by instructors who are veterans), followed by 18 months of remote training and support. Warrior PATHH includes education about the physiological and psychological responses to trauma; emotional regulation training, including meditation techniques; self-disclosure, when appropriate, about trauma and its effect on life afterward; the expansion of personal narratives beyond trauma and its aftermath; and the development of a mission to share what has been learned with others.

Throughout the weeklong initiation, program elements are presented as activities. For example, participants may learn how to regulate their emotions through archery, kayaking, hiking, or meditation. Personal disclosures, while not required, are encouraged during bonfire discussions held at the end of each day.

“People can actually grow from their traumatic events,” says Bret A. Moore, PhD, a psychologist in San Antonio and vice chair of the Boulder Crest Retreat Wellness Committee. “We see people come out the other side to lead a more rewarding and fulfilling life.”

An Actor in Action

Like Lieutenant Dan, Sinise was raised in a family with a strong tradition of military service. His grandfather was an ambulance driver on the front lines in France during World War I, his two uncles fought in World War II, and his father, Robert, served in the Navy in the early 1950s during the Korean War.

Still, the actor's dedication to helping service members may sound unlikely for a guy who nearly dropped out of high school to chase girls and play in a rock band—and Sinise would not disagree. “Acting, specifically theater, was my saving grace in a way,” he says. “I went from being a failing student to wanting to do well in school just so I could act in the plays.”

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Sinise looked to be going nowhere fast before he stumbled into acting at Highland Park High School. He and his best pal in the school's productions, Jeff Perry (a future cast member of ABC's How to Get Away with Murder), went off to college at Illinois State University, where they met Terry Kinney in the theater department. Soon after graduating, the three would-be thespians started the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, presenting its first play in 1974 inside a church in Deerfield, IL. Steppenwolf grew into a nationally recognized, Tony Award–winning powerhouse, featuring such acclaimed actors as John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Joan Allen, John Mahoney, Gary Cole, and Martha Plimpton in its resident ensemble.

“It's really an American Dream kind of story of kids putting in the work and never giving up,” says Sinise, who was artistic director of Steppenwolf for a time. “We were just doing what we loved and figured out a way to keep doing that. If you had told me then that it would turn out to be what it is today, I would not have believed you. And it's still going. Crazy.”

In the early 1980s—not long after Sinise directed and starred in Sam Shepard's True West, the first Steppenwolf production to transfer to New York—“I stumbled across an ad for a play called Tracers, written and performed by Vietnam veterans, about their experiences before, during, and after the war,” he says. “I flew to Los Angeles to see the show and was completely knocked out by the power of the performances.”

After he spent several months persuading the veterans to perform the play at Steppenwolf, it opened in February 1984. “The show was a hit,” Sinise says, “and after each performance they received a standing ovation. I could see that the veterans felt like something was happening for them. From those early days, to now through the Gary Sinise Foundation, I am continually inspired when in the presence of our incredible servicemen and women.”

In 1992, Sinise and his True West co-star John Malkovich played the leads in a film adaptation of John Steinbeck's classic novel Of Mice and Men, which Sinise also directed and produced. Two years later came Forrest Gump and his role as Lieutenant Dan.

“A month after the film opened,” Sinise recalls, “I received an invitation from the Disabled American Veterans organization to accept an award at their convention in Chicago. During the ceremony, I was stunned and humbled, moved beyond words by the reaction I received in a room full of thousands of wounded veterans and their family members who were applauding me for playing a part in a movie. Little did I know how significant the role of Lieutenant Dan and this moment would become in my life.”

Sinise believes the role resonated deeply with veterans because of how the character overcomes his traumatic wartime experience. “Even through all his hardships, being severely wounded and losing his legs, going through terrible despair, anger, and resentment, we see him grow and slowly heal,” he says. “It's a beautiful, positive story, and it seems like a story that so many veterans can relate to. Yet so many veterans who have returned from the battle zone may also view that story as the story they want but never had. It's the story of moving on, of getting knocked down but standing up again. Lieutenant Dan is doing well and thriving, and that is the story we want for everyone coming back from war who has served our country.”

The actor, who's also known for such films as Apollo 13 and The Green Mile and his Emmy-winning title role in the TV movie George Wallace, recently portrayed a sheriff in the movie Joe Bell, starring and produced by his friend Mark Wahlberg. But after nine seasons playing detective Mac Taylor on the hit CBS show CSI: NY, he says, “I am now more selective, and many times these days I have tried to craft my movie and TV schedule around the work I am focused on.”

As described in his 2019 memoir Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service, Sinise's chief focus these days is less on his own career and more on supporting and healing veterans and first responders. “Our veterans and first responders put everything on the line and answer the call of duty in support of our nation and our freedoms,” Sinise says. “We owe them a debt of gratitude for that. I believe we should ensure that they are taken care of when the traumas of duty have become too burdensome to bear.”

Help for Those with Brain Injury

The Gary Sinise Foundation's new Avalon Network is helping to treat veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI) or posttraumatic stress. According to the US Department of Defense, more than 434,600 US military personnel experienced TBI between 2000 and 2020. Nearly 85 percent of those cases were classified as mild—meaning the person was dazed and confused and, less commonly, may have briefly lost consciousness.

Symptoms of TBI can include headache, confusion, dizziness, blurred vision, ringing in the ears, fatigue, changes in sleep patterns, mood changes, and trouble with memory or concentration.

For even seemingly mild head injuries, neurologists urge patients to get checked out at an emergency department. In March 2009, when actress Natasha Richardson fell and hit her head while skiing in Canada, she declined medical attention—but died soon after from bleeding in the brain.

Neurologists and other head-injury specialists say that once a CT scan eliminates the possibility of bleeding, most people with TBI will recover on their own, with only minimal medical intervention. Some doctors used to recommend total rest, or “cocoon therapy,” to virtually all concussion patients: a week or more in a darkened room without television, computers, or visitors. But “that is actually harmful,” says Ramon R. Diaz-Arrastia, MD, PhD, FAAN, director of clinical TBI research at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “Back in the day, when someone had a heart attack, we used to tell them they needed to be on bed rest for a week. Now we know that actually makes things worse. The data are also clear now that ‘cocoon therapy’ is exactly the wrong thing to do.”

Instead, Dr. Diaz-Arrastia says, people are encouraged to resume regular activities as soon as they feel able. For those who experience continuing symptoms, “we have symptomatic treatments that can make a real difference,” he says. “Posttraumatic headaches, for instance, usually respond to antimigraine medications. We also have good therapies for sleep disorders, depression, and anxiety.”

Not all chronic TBI symptoms are caused by a single major injury, he adds. Some are caused by repeated exposure to smaller-scale events, such as when football players get hit in the head or soldiers are near a number of blasts. “Even people who have never sustained a head impact after which they lost consciousness or became confused can experience changes to their brains due to dozens or hundreds of these smaller impacts,” Dr. Diaz-Arrastia says.

For military veterans and first responders whose symptoms of TBI or post-traumatic stress persist beyond six months and are unresponsive to other treatments, a growing number of major medical centers supported by the Avalon Network provide comprehensive care. This can include speech and language therapy, physical therapy, counseling, psychological services, and alternative treatments such as acupuncture, massage, yoga, canine therapy, and art therapy.

Learn More 

The Gary Sinise Foundation Avalon Network is a cognitive health and mental wellness network providing transformative care to veterans and first responders experiencing posttraumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and substance abuse. Its programs are free through the generous support of the foundation. To apply for care or make a donation, visit garysinisefoundation.org.