Entire Stadium is Cheering Little Boy to Win Prize, Doesn't Know Military Dad is Waiting
Do we appreciate the members of our military enough? I’m not sure we do.
I mean, I believe that we think we do. We understand that they secure our freedoms and that they do so at great cost.
They pay for that liberty in pain and sweat, in loneliness and homesickness, in grievous injury and sometimes their very lives. But it’s military members reuniting with their families that remind me of how much their loved ones pay as well.
Just consider the reunion that Sasha and Jonah Lieb shared with their father. According to WEWS, USCG Chief Petty Officer Tim Lieb was on a year-long deployment to Guantanamo Bay.
Instead of simply showing up at home when his deployment was over, Lieb decided to surprise his family. He explained to ABC News that he’d promised his oldest son, nine-year-old Sasha, that he’d take him to his first baseball game.
So he arranged a surprise with the help of his wife, Julia, and the Cleveland Indians. Julia was more than happy to help.
“It was a challenging year, for the boys especially,” she told WOIO. “It was hard, a lot of sleepless nights.”
The surprise involved Julia getting Sasha and his younger brother, six-year-old Jonah, to the stadium on Aug. 6. Once there, they met an announcer and women holding briefcases just like in the game show “Deal or No Deal.”
The announcer asked Sasha if he wanted to play a game and then said, “Somebody special wants to weigh in on which case you should pick.” The Jumbotron screen lit up with an image of Lieb.
“Hey, Jonah and Sasha!” the image of the boys’ father said. “I’m pretty sure you should pick letter K.”
Sasha looked at the briefcases. There were four, and three of them bore the letters “K-E-Y,” while the last had an image of a key.
But Sasha didn’t take his dad’s advice. Not knowing that every case contained the grand prize, he picked “Y” and discovered a baffling message inside: “I’m home!”
“I was like, ‘Wait, who is home?’” Sasha said later. “Then I looked behind me, and my dad is there!”
Julia said that little Jonah had an equally enthusiastic reaction. “Jonah was so scared he was hiding.
“I was hoping he wouldn’t be too scared to hug his dad, but as soon as he saw him he just melted.”
Lieb is now back home for good, and his boys say they have lots of plans for him. “Probably going to snuggle with him a lot,” Sasha said.
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