The Lt. Dan Band

Last Friday night, Jarrod and I went to a fantastic USO concert at Kaneohe Marine Corps Base: Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band. The music was great and it was really cool to be so close to a movie star! You'll recognize Gary Sinise from "CSI: New York," "Apollo 13" and of course "Forrest Gump." Standing just feet from him, I reminisced back to elementary school when "Apollo 13" came out and I thought Gary Sinise was so good-looking that I clipped his picture out of a magazine!


Gary Sinise has been called the Bob Hope of the 21st century for all the work he does with the USO. He travels around the country and the world -- including the war zone -- performing for the troops and their families. I was struck by two things: how happy Gary Sinise and his bandmates seemed up on stage and how sincerely patriotic they seemed. The last song the group performed was "God Bless the USA" and it was done with such heart that it left me attempting to hide the fact that my eyes had gotten slightly watery. I guess such songs will always mean more when you've got a military connection; I was surrounded by Marines and people from other service branches, my dad was in the Air Force for 20 years and still works there as a civilian, and my husband is in the Air Force and extremely likely to be deployed to the Middle East sometime in the next 12 months. The passionately delivered lines, "And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me, And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today," seemed particularly applicable.