Marine's return home a covert op mission
For weeks, Kailee Johnson has been watching Internet videos of soldiers returning home from war zones and surprising family members. [img_r]http://media.jsonline.com/images/mjs-stincol04--p-1-mjs_-news_-mjd.jpg[/img_r]
Her turn came Thursday.
It happened during sixth-grade social studies class at Wisconsin Hills Middle School in Brookfield.
At 9:15 on the otherwise ordinary morning, her teacher, Tammy Dentice, called out Kailee's name.
"I looked and he was halfway across the room," Kailee said. It took a second for this vision to sink in. Her brother, Colin Glavan, was home from Afghanistan and standing right there in her classroom.
"Colin!" she cried, bolting from her desk and throwing herself into the arms of the United States Marine. The other students clapped, and we adults who witnessed the moment cried.
Kailee had not seen him in 14 months, though she thought about him every day. Worried, too. A toy bear from Colin lives in her school locker, and a photo of him in uniform is taped to the inside of the door.
The serviceman's family worked quietly with the school to stage the reunion and keep it a secret from 12-year-old Kailee. In military parlance, it was a covert op.
Colin, who turns 23 Friday, returned to Wisconsin this week from the long deployment in Afghanistan, where he worked in intelligence and created maps used in military operations. He also has been stationed in Iraq twice. I've written about Colin two times before - when he joined the Marines in 2006 and again in 2008 when he shipped out for the first time to a war zone.
"So much emotion," his mother, Trish Johnson, said as we talked at the school after the successful surprise mission. "Just to watch Kailee's expression is priceless.
"I wish I could explain to people how it is. You send your kid off to war, I mean, and then you see him come back and your whole life is changed by it all. You'd think after the third time you'd get kind of used to this, but you don't. You don't at all."
It's not only troops far from home who get tattoos. Trish, who works at Marquette University, got one while Colin was in Afghanistan.
"It is the word believe on the inside of my wrist. It reminds me on a daily basis that you just have to believe that I am going to get through not only this deployment but the day."
She has two other children, daughter Breeanne and son Arie. But her oldest and youngest, Colin and Kailee, have a special bond. It hurts Kailee when he is gone, but she wrote in her school journal that he is "saving the world."
Breeanne was there for the reunion Thursday, along with Colin's stepdad, Curt Johnson, and Colin's wife, Rachel. The couple, who met at Brookfield East High School, live near Camp Pendleton in California where he's stationed. They're heading back there after spending a week in Wisconsin.
Colin's commitment to the Marines ends in October, but he's thinking about re-upping and learning a new specialty of explosive ordnance disposal, which was featured Hollywood style in the movie "The Hurt Locker."
"It's challenging. If I get the chance to do it, I'm going to run at it and give it all I got," he said.
There's time to decide that later. Thursday was all about a Marine who was finally home and a girl who couldn't stop smiling.
"I'm just going crazy. I'm so happy and excited for him to be home," Kailee said.
She left school way early to hang out with Colin and maybe play some video game soccer. And she didn't have to sneak out past Wisconsin Hills Principal Robyn Martino.
"You get a day off," the school boss decreed. "Principal's order."