Sinise's Ravinia Homecoming Is a Sweeping Success

By Steve Sadin

How often does an actor who once swept the stage at a world famous venue get to later star on that platform?

That is exactly what Gary Sinise did Thursday when the Highland Park-bred movie, television and theater star came home to perform with his Lt. Dan Band at Ravinia.

During the summer of 1976, Sinise founded Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater along with Highland Park High School classmate Jeff Perry, John Malkovich, Moira Harris and others in the basement of the Immaculate Conception Church’s school in Highland Park. He also worked on the Ravinia grounds crew to earn a living that summer.

“I would rake the grass (and) swept up the stage,” Sinise said to the audience between songs during Thursday’s concert.

Before Sinise became an actor as a sophomore at Highland Park High School he was a musician. Fred Lurie, a Deerfield resident and Chicago attorney, played in a band with Sinese when they were classmates at Indian Trail Elementary School and Elm Place Junior High.

“He was a regular guy,” Lurie said. “He was one of my closest friends.” That band played a lot of 60’s music but when Sinise was part of Half Day Road in high school, his style changed. “He became kind of a hard rocker,” Lurie added.

Something else happened to Sinise when he was a sophomore at Highland Park. “Barbara Patterson, the drama teacher, came up to me and said ‘we’re casting for West Side Story. You should try out because you look like a gang member,’” he said.

Sinise accepted the challenge. A career and more was launched. “When I did (join the West Side Story cast) I met my best friend, Jeff Perry,” Sinise said as the seeds of Steppenwolf were firmly planted.

Now people watching prime time network television can see Perry play Cyrus Beene on “Scandal” at 9 p.m. on Thursday and then tune in 24 hours later to watch Sinise star as Mac Taylor in “CSI New York.”

On his return to Ravinia, Sinise showed his genius with the Lt. Dan Band by spending the concert playing his guitar, highlighting the other performers and making each of them look outstanding.

The band played a variety of music from the old time classic “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Co. B” to contemporary pieces both soft and hard. The real purpose of the band is entertaining American troops, which it has done all over the world.

When it plays concerts like it did Thursday, the band is raising money to help veterans. “No one should ever be treated like the Viet Nam veterans,” Sinise said remembering the times of his own youth. That is one of the reasons he received the nation’s second highest civilian honor, the Presidential Citizen Medal, from President George W. Bush in 2008.