Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(95)

For three days I stayed in the hospital. Ella slept on the couch in my room. The wounded veterans at Walter Reed who I’d been scheduled to visit found out about my accident and sent me a get-well card instead. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, sent me a note saying he was sorry I missed the event with him and to get well soon.

My good friend Ben Robin, who’d been doing my makeup and hair for a long time, flew out from L.A. to DC to help. We’d just finished shooting CSI: NY for the season, but I had a full schedule of volunteer events. Everything needed to be canceled or rescheduled. My friend Dave McIntyre offered to pick me up in his plane and fly me home to L.A. This proved extremely helpful, because going through a commercial airport in my condition would have been difficult, plus we wanted to be careful how word got out to the press. Ben flew home with me.

We had just ordered a hospital bed for Moira so she wouldn’t need to climb upstairs with her back surgery. We ordered another one for me and moved it in downstairs next to Moira’s. Side by side, for the next month, we stayed in hospital beds in our living room—her with her back brace, me with my neck brace, fighting good-naturedly over the TV remote. I started rehabilitation within two weeks, and Moira soon went to her back appointments, and within a couple of weeks we were both back on schedule.

I’m grateful I woke up. I’m grateful I healed. Not everyone wakes up or heals.

For a month, I was off my feet and off the grid. When I finally came back toward the end of April, I played three concerts, one a military-appreciation event at Fort Drum, New York, plus two fund-raisers to build houses for wounded vets. Two months after the accident, I was back onstage at the National Memorial Day Concert. I invited the off-duty firefighter who’d stopped for me, plus the driver of my car, to be my guests. The driver had recovered well and was doing all right.

The entire experience made me see powerfully how quickly life can change. My schedule had been crazy. I had been going everywhere, doing everything. Moira chuckled at one point and said, “Well, you’ve been benched. Maybe this was the only way to get you to slow down.” During those long days in our living room, I considered how one minute you’re here and everything’s going well. The next minute, even without expectation or awareness, life can completely change. You could be injured. You could be gone.

It made me think of our soldiers who have been wounded or have died in explosions. Some never knew what hit them. Just kaboom, and they were gone. Others went from one reality to another reality without remembering the middle. One minute they drove along in a Humvee. The next minute they lay in a hospital bed, with life forever changed.

I couldn’t wait to get back to our mission.



In 2009, the evening after I’d helped pass out the Operation International Children (OIC) backpacks and school supplies at the Afghan school, I was staying at Bagram Air Base. I’d just finished the USO concert, and backstage General Mike Scaparrotti invited me to attend a send-off ceremony the following morning for what’s called an “Angel Flight,” the airplane trip that carries a fallen warrior home. Staff Sergeant Matthew Pucino, thirty-four, one of our special forces soldiers, had been killed shortly before our arrival at the base. He’d been on a patrol near Pashay Kala when his vehicle struck an IED, ending this warrior’s mission. At 5:00 a.m. the next day, Matthew’s body would be flown home to the United States.

I wanted to learn more about this hero. I found out that Matthew was as all-American as they came. He’d played baseball and football as a boy growing up in Plymouth and Bourne, Massachusetts. In high school, he quarterbacked his school’s football team. After graduation, he went to university and earned a degree in criminal justice, intent on pursuing a career in law enforcement, but like so many others, his life’s direction was changed forever by 9/11. He enlisted in 2002 and worked to become one of the best of the best, eventually becoming a Green Beret. He deployed twice to Iraq where he helped capture more than two hundred insurgents. Once, during a mission on Christmas Eve, his team came under heavy attack. Badly wounded, a sergeant needed blood to survive. Matthew quickly donated not just one, but two pints of blood to help his fellow soldier, then straightaway returned to the battle. After he came home to America, he reenlisted and deployed to Afghanistan to continue the fight against global terror. Those who knew him best simply called him “Uncle Matt.”

I woke early, showered, and dressed. The general came to get me, and we arrived at the flight line shortly before 5:00 a.m. In the dark of the early morning we pulled up behind a giant C-17 with the back ramp down. Outside the airplane several military personnel stood quietly at attention in respect. It was a very still and somber scene. I could see into the belly of the plane. Bright lights lit the inside where a few soldiers stood watch over the flag-draped coffin of their fallen brother. The general and I got out of the car, and my throat had a lump that wouldn’t go down. I stood motionless for a moment, staring at the casket, then followed the general onto the plane. Just the two of us. I looked at the sad faces of the soldiers quietly standing guard over their friend. Then I looked at the coffin.

General Scaparrotti knelt. He rested his hand on top of the coffin, and I knelt beside him and did the same. I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and said a silent prayer for this soldier and for his family who would be at Dover Air Force Base to receive their fallen loved one when he returned home.