A soldier dad gave his son an incredible reunion surprise when he suddenly appeared from inside his school's tiger mascot costume. Sgt. Perry Chronister had been deployed in the Middle East as a member of the Ohio Army Nation Guard. The separation was tough on Perry's son, Eli, 7, as Wi-Fi signal was bad in some of Perry's locations, meaning the pair could not keep in regular video contact. Perry, from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, wanted to plan a special reunion surprise for Eli to make up for lost time. He contacted Eli's school, DeWitt Elementary, and one of Eli’s teachers came up with the idea of having Perry enter the building disguised as the school's mascot, Black Tiger. On August 18, Eli's first day back at school after the summer, Perry entered his son's classroom in a tiger costume, waving to the kids in Eli's class. Then, after the initial excitement, Perry removed the costume's head and revealed the big surprise to his son. Eli headed through the classroom and gave his dad a much-needed hug.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 My heart was racing.
00:01 I was gone for approximately just about a year.
00:05 I was over in the Middle East.
00:06 He knew that I was gone, but I don't think he fully understood
00:09 what that actually meant.
00:10 When I finally got the return date, I was like, all right,
00:14 that's right around the first day of school.
00:17 The teachers were super supportive and they were like, maybe
00:20 you could put on the tiger mascot and do like a big reveal
00:23 surprise that way.
00:24 It was very hard to contain myself as soon as I walked in
00:29 that room just not to go straight to him and hug him.
00:32 He took me down to the ground.
00:44 Lots of butterflies in my stomach and it was just an overwhelming
00:51 feeling.
00:51 He just had his head buried in my shoulder and just I knew
00:54 he was fighting back tears, but that hug, it just felt a lot