‘Half the class was crying:’ Army mom reunites with son at Bluffton Elementary

Dhariane Sathler listened through the classroom door at Bluffton Elementary School. She hadn’t seen her son, 8-year-old Darryl “D.J.” Spaulding, in a year.

“As soon as I heard his voice, I started crying,” Sathler said.

A sergeant in the U.S. Army, she’d been deployed to Iraq and Kuwait.

But Tuesday afternoon, D.J. got a sweet surprise.

Mom was home early.

A video of their reunion was posted to the school’s Facebook page this week.

Here’s how the reunion unfolded:

Principal Christine Brown calls D.J. to the front of the class. He thought he was being used as part of the lesson plan.

“How do we do things when we know people are gone and the fact that we don’t get to see them for a long time?” Brown asks the class.

She steps away from D.J. and toward the door.

“I’ll be right back,” she says. “I’m going to grab another kid ... .”

The next thing you see?

D.J. sprinting across the room into his mother’s arms.

The class bursts into applause.

Half of the kids also burst into tears, D.J. among them.

“When they called me in, the lights were off because the power went out so it was hard to see him at first,” Sathler said. “And then we both saw each other and were like, ‘Oh my God,’and we just hugged for a long time and cried.”

This was her third deployment, but it was the first time she’d been deployed since D.J. was born.

He was used to mom being gone for training.

But a year’s a long time.

“It was really hard at first, especially when I was in Iraq,” Sathler said. “Once I got back to Kuwait, it got easier.”

“I didn’t allow myself to have enough down time to think about it. But toward the end ... that was the only thing I cared about was seeing him again.”

Sure, they spoke over Facetime and would send the occasional text message, she said.

But it’s not the same.

“Just being able to touch his face and just look at him... He was real again,” Sathler said.

She didn’t realize how much he’d grown until she saw him on Tuesday.

“He got so tall,” Sathler said. “He’s like up to my chin now.”

D.J. thought his mom was coming home on Wednesday, she said. But she wanted to surprise him.

She spoke with his dad first, who then helped her get in touch with the school. He asked them to put her name on the list so she could pick him up.

Then they started planning the surprise.

D.J.’s teacher, Emily Gallagher, was in on it. And of course Principal Brown wanted to help out.

“We try to be extremely supportive of our military families, and for us to be a part of her reunion was just an honor,” Brown said.

It was certainly a moment Sathler won’t forget.

“It’s really good to be able to be with him again and pick him up from school and just be around him again,” she said. “Integrating back into civilian life is difficult and scary ... but I’m looking forward to getting back to normalcy again.”

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 4:04 PM with the headline "‘Half the class was crying:’ Army mom reunites with son at Bluffton Elementary."