An American soldier returned from deployment just in time to surprise his sister while she was graduating college.
Although many of us understand that life can be tough for a soldier stationed abroad even during peacetime, it can easy to underestimate how much their absence can affect a military family.
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While that family’s worry can depend on where their loved ones have been sent, it’s hard to spend a long time away from someone you’re close to and we can see that in how emotional their reunions tend to be.
And indeed, it’s not hard to find opportunities to witness this as it seems that so many in the service love to give their families a beautiful surprise when they’re able to return from deployment. Whether that surprise was engineered by that family’s friends or subtly arranged by the veterans themselves during a FaceTime call , you can be sure that the waterworks will start flowing when they reveal themselves.
That’s precisely what went down when a proud moment in one young woman’s life was made all the more special by her brother.
When LaDyra Lyte was poised to receive her degree in Fashion, Interior Design and Merchandising from Central Michigan University, she was stopped when the school’s president had a special message for her.
As Good Morning America reported, he began to read a letter from her brother LaDaryl , who had spent close to a year in deployment with the U.S. Army Reserve at that point.
And as we can see, she was moved to tears when she heard LaDaryl’s words, which stated, “I want you to tell my sister how proud I am, how gracious she is, how superlative she is, and I know that she is going to do amazing things in her life. She is one in a million with a special talent of knowing just how to move forward.”
But what Lyte didn’t know was that he had already received leave from the Army and that her school was about to make him their surprise guest of honor.
And that made this day particularly special to him because he had to miss Lyte’s high school graduation while leaving for basic training back in 2017. As he saw it, there was no way that was going to happen again.
But since this was a surprise he had just about his whole family, that meant he had to arrive for the ceremony two hours early so none of them would spot him.
In his words, “The night before I couldn’t even sleep because I was nervous, so I was essentially up for like 36 hours to do this surprise.”
But it was all worth it to step behind his sister and surprise her, which she said made her feel like she was seeing a ghost.
By then, his family had already started screaming and it wasn’t long after he hugged her that he suddenly felt himself lifting into the air.
Once he heard his father’s voice, he realized that he had been pulled into a powerful bear hug.
And as Lyte explained, her dad’s enthusiastic bounding towards her brother could have only happened on the most special of occasions.
As she put it, “My dad doesn’t run anymore. He has bad knees. I couldn’t believe it.”
Considering how close they are in age and how committed they were to each other’s special moments, nothing could have made Lyte’s graduation feel complete than her brother’s presence.
But that day was also one that she wanted to make bigger than herself as she specially designed her graduation gown to honor those whose deaths have inspired a resurgence in America’s racial justice movement. As such, her gown featured a variety of names including those of Trayvon Martin and Breonna Taylor.
In Lyte’s words, “I wanted to tribute every single Black or Brown individual that died too soon because of police brutality and I wanted them to walk across stage with me.”
h/t: Good Morning America