Variety’s Salute to Service, presented by History, honored Rachael Ray, Ken Burns, Montel Williams, Dana Delany, and Bob Woodruff for their contributions to veterans groups
Presented by the History Channel, Variety’s annual Salute to Service honored five people from all forms of media for their contributions to the armed forces. Hosted by Martha Raddatz, the five honorees were present at a lunch for them and honoring a number of members of the armed forces past and present. Rachael Ray, Ken Burns, Montel Williams, Dana Delany, and Bob Woodruff were presented their awards by their colleagues and friends. Read on for interviews with all five of the honorees, discussing what service means to them, how every person can help the armed forces and more.
KEN BURNS
The Knockturnal: You’re being honored today at Variety’s Salute to Service. What does “service” mean to you?
Ken Burns: I think in the case here, we’re talking about the ultimate service that our military provides to us: to protect the lasting values that we have. Very few of us expect that our violent end could come at any moment, but if you look over there [pointing at men and women in uniform], there’re people who are trained to do exactly that, to put up with the absolutely intolerable to support the values that we all hold. If we don’t lift at least a pinky to help, we’re not doing our job as citizens
Ken Burns during Variety’s Salute to Service in New York City November 12, 2018.
The Knockturnal: You’ve worked on The Vietnam War, The Civil War, The War, all of them amazing. What has surprised you most about looking at historical records about soldiers, compared to living veterans and serving servicemembers?
Ken Burns: I think that each of the films, without setting out in any mundane way, are all anti-war films. But there is no chance that human behavior will ever change, there’ll always be wars. What’s striking is that for all the uniqueness of all the wars, the experience of combat is almost exactly the same. You can hear it in the soldiers’ letters coming home from the Civil War, you can hear it from the testimony of those veterans we were fortunate enough to interview for our film on the second World War called The War, and it was really clear not only from the marines and army veterans of the Vietnam War but their counterparts, the Veit Cong guerillas and the North Vietnamese soldiers.
The Knockturnal: What are you working on currently?
Ken Burns: I’ve got several things I’m working on. A big history of country music that will be out next year, we’re working on a three-part, six-hour biography of Ernest Hemmingway, probably a six-to-eight part biography of Muhammad Ali, and our next war is going to be the American Revolution. We want to get it out by 2025, which will be the 250th anniversary of [the Battle of] Lexington and Concord. That’s the way we roll, it seems like a long time away for you but it’s tomorrow for me.
RACHAEL RAY
The Knockturnal: What makes November a month of Veteran’s Day instead of just Thanksgiving to you?
Rachael Ray: Well, that’s what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about—caring about each other and caring about our country. And they’re both uniquely American holidays, Veteran’s Day is… Veteran’s Day! And Thanksgiving wouldn’t have happened if hadn’t… let’s be honest, come here and kinda stole the country. But since we did, we’re pretty thankful that people shared corn and turkey with us. So it’s a month of being mindful, but I think that being mindful is kind of like a really good cold you can catch. If you catch that cold in November, maybe you can hold onto it in December and January and February and on to next November. It’s kind of like a challenge. The November challenge — can you be grateful every day? Everyone should be grateful every day for being an American, for having the right to vote, and for our vets
MONTEL WILLIAMS
The Knockturnal: You’re being honored today at Variety’s Salute to Service. What does “service” mean to you?
Montel Williams: I think, what it means to me is what it should mean to everybody in this entire country. Those who put a uniform on their back, it’s less than .9% of this country, and they’re the only reason that you and I get to stand here and talk. And their sacrifices are part of the reasons why—whether we agree with the wars or not—any step along the way if we had lost one of those, we right now might be under different rule. When we think about service, we should be thinking about the fact that it’s no longer a narcissistic thing to reach out and protect others, and keeping us and our democracy.
The Knockturnal: You work with a lot of charities that support the Armed Forces, can you tell me a little bit about your work with them?
Montel Williams poses on the red carpet during Variety’s Salute to Service in New York City November 12, 2018.
Montel Williams: Well, I just launched a couple of brand new shows. One of them is called Military Makeover with Montel, it’s on Lifetime. And that show, what we do is we take deserving veterans who have had some difficulty, and we give them not only a handout but a hand up. And we help them get back to the position where they can reach out and help others. Another show that’s an offshoot of that is called Military Makeover: Operation Careers, and we salute businesses that hire veterans and the veterans that get hired in those businesses.
I also work closely with Fisher House, which is like the Ronald McDonald House for VA hospitals. Many people don’t understand that the best thing about recovery when you’re hurting was to have family. A lot of our veterans, especially our troops who don’t make a lot of money, they can’t afford to put a wife and a child up for six or seven months or a year, as long as somebody has got to heal. So Fisher House provides that living situation for family members.
DANA DELANY
The Knockturnal: You’re being honored today at Variety’s Salute to Service. What does “service” mean to you?
Dana Delany: Obviously you are serving somebody. It means taking your ego out of it, that you’re for the greater good and not for yourself.
The Knockturnal: So from China Beach to The Code, which is coming out early next year, you’ve played a number of service people and first responders and all sorts of people who are fighting for our country. What attracts you to those kinds of roles?
Dana Delany and Gerry Byrne pose on the carpet during Variety’s Salute to Service in New York City November 12, 2018.
Dana Delany: Well, I learned when I was doing China Beach from the women who had been nurses in Vietnam that they really were so selfless, and I never really believed that before. As an actor, you’re taught to look for people’s personal motivation, and they didn’t have any. They were there for the boys. And it really was about serving for other people. And I think that’s beautiful. It’s something I aspire to.
The Knockturnal: And with The Code coming soon, can you tell us a little about your character in that?
Dana Delany: Well now I’m the boss, playing Colonel Glenn Turnbull and it’s the judge advocate corps, and she’s a Marine and she’s in charge. And it’s fun, it’s really fun. We’re dealing with legal stuff, and we’re dealing with stuff that’s happening overseas because in the military you have different bases all over the world. So it’s also a global show.
BOB WOODRUFF
The Knockturnal: You’re being honored today at Variety’s Salute to Service. What does “service” mean to you?
Bob Woodruff speaks during Variety’s Salute to Service in New York City November 12, 2018.
Bob Woodruff: Service can take on many different forms, be it serving your family and your children and sending them off to college, but also serving those veterans who go off to wars. This is the [100th] anniversary of Veteran’s Day after World War I in 1918, so the hope was that Armistice Day would somehow end the wars, that after that war it would never happen again, but look, they’re still going on. So we just have to make sure that those who serve get acknowledged and get the honor that they deserve, and hope that they can be brought back to the way their lives were before
The Knockturnal: You founded the Bob Woodruff Foundation, and I know that that works with a number of charities and other organizations that help veterans and servicemembers. What have you learned most from working with so many of these people?
Bob Woodruff: I think that everybody wants to do something for the veterans. I mean, this is so far away from the political battles that are happening in our country where you’re split so far to the left or so far to the right. In terms of doing something for the veterans, everybody wants to do it. And our role really is to find the best organizations out there so that people, when they want to do something, they find the best ways to do it. That’s really our job, to vet those to help the vets.
