Gracie Ringer reunites with her dad Sean at Grant Elementary School after a year of deployment. (Photo courtesy of WAOW-TV)
WISCONSIN RAPIDS, WI (WSAU-WDLB) –A special moment Friday for a Wisconsin Rapids family—all back together again after more than a year.
First Sergeant Sean Ringer returned from active duty, serving the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Gone for more than a year and wanting to surprise his daughter Gracie, the family arranged a reunion with Grant Elementary Principal Tom Bruns. Principle Bruns says the reunion event has been over a year in the making.
“The stars just aligned. A beautiful day, school pictures inside. It gave me that excuse and reason to have the kids all outside lined up showing their social distancing and masking under this condition. It just worked out that we were able to contact the Fire Department and make it happen.”
Gracie and her classmates thought they were lining up outside for a class picture. That’s when Sergeant Ringer showed up in a Town of Grand Rapids fire engine. “It’s been tough knowing that everybody back home was struggling with the new changes with COVID. It even made it further difficult on top of being away from home. … Pretty excited. We’ve got to find a little time up north to hang out maybe on the boat before it gets too cold.”
Nine-year-old Gracie was glad her first deployment as a soldier’s daughter was over. “It was really hard. I missed him a lot. And I missed him a lot I missed fishing with him and doing projects; it was hard.”
Around 150 members of the National Guard’s 829th Engineering Company returned home on Thursday. The unit based in Spooner and Ashland mobilized last October on a construction mission and took assignments on 21 bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
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