Home for Christmas
Air Force soldier surprises sisters at school after being deployed for two years
TI feel like the big elephant is now off my back, and now I have all three of my kids back home under the same roof for at least a month.” —Kim Spaulding, mother
exas High School junior Piper Spaulding and her sister, Hartley Spaulding, a freshman, could hardly halt their emotions as they rushed into their brother’s open arms Thursday morning—with tears streaming.
“We expected him to be home for Christmas, but we weren’t sure exactly when he would be back,” Hartley said of her brother, Air Force Airman 1st Class Sawyer Spaulding, who just came back from almost two years’ deployment overseas.
“I really don’t know what to say, but I’m so proud of him, and I’m really surprised,” Piper said.
Sawyer Spaulding, a 2013 graduate of Texas High, said he was just glad to be back home after more than 22 months away.
“I just want to do nothing for a few weeks,” he said. “You just don’t miss family until you see how much you’re gone from home. You get use to being away, but it’s really eye-opening to come back home. I’ll be back here for a month before going back overseas.”
Spaulding, who works in munitions,
returned home to Texarkana from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Wednesday, following a six-month deployment to Afghanistan, from April to October this year, and a 16-month stint at Aviano Air Force Base in Italy with the U.S. 31st Munitions Squadron.
For Spaulding’s mother, Kim Spaulding, who teaches horticulture at the high school, the surprise was not quite as intense—especially since she arranged the reunion for her children. But she still felt relieved to see all three in one place, inside the THS horticulture building.
“I feel like the big elephant is now off my back, and now I have all three of my kids back home under the same roof for at least a month,” she said.
Kim Spaulding said her son’s love of history and aircraft technology prompted his Air Force enlistment in August 2013.
“He visited all branches of service, but finally settled for the Air Force,” she said.
During her son’s 22-month deployment, Kim Spaulding said she and her son communicated regularly on Facebook. This is what allowed her to plot his Christmas homecoming as a surprise for his sisters.
“I left the surprise planning all up to mom, and she did it all,” Sawyer Spaulding said.
By enlisting the support of Texas High’s Tiger Vision television station, Kim Spaulding arranged to have the school’s television crew stage a fake interview with her about her acceptance of a fake Texas Horticulture Teacher of the Year Award. This was the ruse that also would bring her daughters to the horticulture building—the scene of the arranged surprise—for interviews about the award.
Sawyer Spaulding’s father, Brian Spaulding, went along with his wife’s ruse and picked their son up at DFW airport the day before.
“I let the girls know I was going on a ‘hunting trip,’” he said. “We had good time and a lot of good hugs at the airport.”
During the last week of his Afghanistan deployment, an earthquake hit the country, but Sawyer Spaulding came through the ordeal without injury, though the event gave his mother some stressful moments.
“It took me a couple of hours to get back in touch with him after the quake,” Kim Spaulding said.
But Sawyer Spaulding said the quake seemed kind of fun. “We were in transition dorms that last week of our deployment,” he said. “These buildings looked like warehouses, and I was asleep during the day it happened, since I work the night shift. The beds were shaking, but I thought it was kind of fun.”
For Kim Spaulding, finding out that her son came through the earthquake after the twohour information blackout helped a lot.
“I can’t imagine what it was like for moms who had to live through war times when all that existed was snail mail,” she said.