Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(80)
Backstage at my first Snowball event, I also met Jim Palmersheim, an American Airlines pilot and Operation Desert Shield/Storm veteran who at that time was volunteering in support of the new Military and Veterans Initiatives (MVI) program at American. The airline has done a lot of caring for veterans. AA lost two planes on 9/11, and their representatives were now doing all they could to support our nation’s defenders. American Airlines had supported the first Snowball Express event in 2006 and were supporting it again the following year. An instant friendship sprang up with Jim.
A year later, in 2008, I volunteered my band to do another concert to support an organization called Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes at their event in Orlando, Florida. They serve and support our wounded service members, and I’d begun helping them back in 2004. At this 2008 event, American Airlines was lending travel support. Jim Palmersheim was there and had now become managing director for Military and Veterans Initiatives at American. After the event, he and I sat down for a drink and I told him all about Operation Iraqi Children. Our minds started cooking up an idea, and he arranged for an American Airlines plane to ferry school supplies to Iraq—twenty-two tons of school supplies on that one flight alone. It was a big donation and a big trip. Over the years, AA has done great things for our veterans and for the families of our troops.
From that first event in 2007, I’ve supported Snowball Express every year since. In 2008, I couldn’t bring in my band due to scheduling difficulties, but I still wanted to support the kids. So, on the Snowball Express weekend, after my shoot at CSI: NY finished at 6:00 p.m., I jumped into my car and headed down to Anaheim, where I took pictures with kids and signed autographs, then presented the organization with a donation of $10,000 from Moira and me.
In 2009, the event moved to Dallas, the main hub for American Airlines. A huge group of volunteers and local sponsors got on board, and the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth made available many great things for the kids to do. From 2015 to 2017, my concert for the kids was held in Fort Worth at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base. The entire Snowball Express four-day event includes magic shows, parades, skits, bowling, and face painting. Scholarships are given out to older teens. The most moving part of the event comes when the children march down the street surrounded by cheering residents of Dallas–Fort Worth, each child, upward of fifteen hundred of them, holding a balloon. The children have written messages on the balloons to their fallen parent. The balloons are released into the sky. The messages of love soar into the heavens. Dallas rolled out the red carpet for these children for nine good years, and each year the Dallas volunteers did absolutely everything possible to make sure the children had a great time.
I love this event for the kids so much that in 2018, we brought Snowball Express under the Gary Sinise Foundation umbrella of programs, and moved the event to Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Dallas is terrific, but to change things up and give the event new life, it was time to move to “the happiest place on earth.” Some one thousand kids and 668 parents and guardians came in 2018, and everybody had a great time.
New children come to Snowball Express each year, and it’s sobering to realize they are not new because they haven’t heard of the program before, but because each year our troops continue to give their lives. When children turn eighteen, they graduate from Snowball to make room for additional children. Each year we see returning children too. It’s moving for me to stand onstage and see these children grow up, year after year, always with the loss of their parent in mind. It never really goes away. Some of the older teens adopt a mentoring attitude, and they take the younger children under their wings and help them through their difficult experiences.
I could not be prouder to be a part of creating opportunities for joy, friendship, and communal healing by connecting families struggling with loss to one another. Together, they share a common bond and can feel part of a bigger family. The children meet and interact with others who understand what they have been through, and help each other through this unique and terrible experience. It cannot be overstated what an event like this can mean to a child who has lost a parent in military service. Struggling with their grief can be overwhelming, and uniting together with hundreds of other children experiencing a similar tragic loss can be the magic that carries them throughout the year.
One of the children’s favorite songs that we do year after year is “Life Is a Highway” by Tom Cochrane, covered by Rascal Flatts and featured in the movie Cars. The song’s got a great up-tempo feeling, and it always sets the crowd dancing. During that song, I always welcome the kids to come up onto the stage with us so they can bop around with the band. Word gets out beforehand, and kids pile up in front of the stage waiting for the moment they know I’ll invite them up. There’s so much joy on their faces during these moments. It’s such a blessing to interact with the kids this way.
At the same time, I’m always reminded of the solemnity embedded in these moments, of the incredible cost represented in the faces of the children who come to this event. I feel for these families so deeply. I hurt. How profoundly grateful we all must become—as individuals, as a nation—when we realize anew the magnitude of the sacrifice given for us. Freedom is never free. Someone has to pay.
Last year, one girl wore a T-shirt to the event with these words printed on the back: “In honor/memory of . . .” and underneath the words was a blank box where kids could write in the name of their fallen hero.