Father on leave surprises daughters

PALMER — For nine months Kacie, Samantha and Briana Arsenault only talked to their dad on Skype and via Facebook.

Small wonder that when Samantha, 10, saw him standing in camo fatigues in the corner outside the front office of Sherrod Elementary School Friday morning she almost immediately burst into tears.

That part was always kind of a foregone conclusion.

“She’s my crybaby,” Samantha’s mother, Lana Arsenault, joked by way of predicting how her daughter would greet her father.

“What are you crying for?” her dad gently kidded her.

“She’s happy,” her sister, Briana, 7, said helpfully.

The stop at Sherrod was actually the second of three for the Arsenaults. First they stopped next door to surprise Briana and, from there, they drove to Palmer Junior Middle School to meet surprise their oldest, Kacie, 12.

Lana’s prognostications fell apart at the Middle School. She and her other daughters had jokingly predicted that the oldest Arsenault daughter would be blasé about their father’s return, as middle school students often are.

Instead, Kacie greeted her father in the PJMS front office with an excited “Oh my God!” and a big hug followed by almost as much tearfulness as her sibling.

For the last nine months their father, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. John Arsenault, had been in Korea. His return is not permanent. He’s back on leave.

“I work about 40 miles from the DMZ,” he said, referring to the Demilitarized Zone no-man’s-land between the North Korea and South Korea. “What they say about the North is pretty accurate.”

The Arsenaults discussed moving to Korea, but eventually decided against it.

“I could take my family over there but I’m not over there long enough to uproot family,” he said.

It’s not John’s first deployment. He mentioned both Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan as places he’s been in the past though he said there have been others. Sgt. Arsenault works in transportation with aircraft.

Lana said nine months is tough but keeping in touch helps. They’ve also done longer hitches.

“We did a 15,” she said, smiling wide as she basked in her children’s happy glow.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.