Gary Dunham went to Iraq twice last year and it changed his perspective on life. But it wasn't the war that led to the change -- it was talking to the young servicemen and servicewomen about the climate crisis. He'd always assumed that most people had a pretty good understanding of the climate crisis and its causes. But one day he started to give an impromptu presentation to a small gathering of soldiers and saw the shock on their faces when they realized that this problem was caused by people . It propelled Gary even deeper into his mission of telling as many people as he could about the crisis. That mission began when he watched Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Gary is not a typical environmental activist. At 71 years old, he is a registered Republican and self-confessed cynic who cared little about climate change. One day he was waiting for his wife Jan to finish a meeting with Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and flicking through the TV channels in his hotel room, and he caught a few minutes of the Oprah Winfrey show. Not a fan of either Oprah or her guest Leonardo DiCaprio, he stood rooted to the spot as they talked about the climate crisis and the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. He saw the movie that night and again the following night with his wife. Before then Gore was the guy Gary didn't vote for in the 2000 elections. Now he's a firm believer in the Former Vice President's message that we need to act now to solve the climate crisis.
Fired up by the movie, Gary Dunham created his very own slide show for his wife to present at her DAR meetings: "Something," he says, "to rock those little old ladies." They painstakingly scanned in images from the movie's companion volume. But he soon found himself making presentations around town. Gary became a local celebrity, and the slide show was in much demand. So much so that he got worried his facts about the climate crisis might need double-checking before he got into trouble. When he called Gore's office in Nashville he was invited to become an inaugural messenger for the Climate Project, and was trained by Al Gore himself at the family's farm.
Spreading the message has now become a part of Gary's life. He has come out of retirement to become Director of Operations for the Climate Project in Nashville, creating infrastructure for the more than one thousand messengers trained to give the slide show. He and his wife are even moving from Houston to Nashville, his wife selling the house while he sets up the office. As an advertising copywriter he used to sell to the CEOs of large corporations, but now "they are pitching to me!" he says excitedly. "They all say 'We don't know what to do, but we want to help.'" Individuals call him to offer their help too. On the day he talked to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a firefighter, a hero from 9/11, had phoned offering his services.
Not surprisingly Gary Dunham's three kids and seven grandkids are very proud of him. When asked about their father, his children say, without a tinge of irony in their voices, "Dad's still saving the planet," His wife, Jan, is proud too. She attends almost every single climate change presentation he gives, sitting next to him on stage clicking through the slides she knows so well. Gary and Jan recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. She asked him whether he'd had any regrets over the years, and he told her his only one had been that he'd never done a big or heroic thing. Until now.
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