Ryan would have never made it home in time for his Papa's funeral if this man, our friend Rick Jeffries, hadn't flown Elayna & me to meet Ryan in Atlanta, GA. At Neil's visitation, he & his wife had asked when Ryan was coming in. (We thought he'd already be home. Silly us. Stupid Kuwait.) And when I said that he wasn't going to make it for the funeral (or might, if every star was in some sort of miraculous alignment, and only by the skin of his teeth and arriving very late), Rick offered to fly down and pick him up in GA, saying that it would take less than 2 hours to fly down there. And since his plane was supposed to land in the early morning, that would give us plenty of time to fly him home so he could also go the the second visitation before the funeral. Sounds great right? Well, the problem was that I had no idea of how to get this message to Ryan, "Don't make your connecting flight. We're picking you up in Atlanta!" Rick said to call him any hour that night if I'd heard from Ryan and was able to give him the message.
Ryan had turned his phone off for the duration of his leave, so there was no way of telling or texting him the message. I was stewing and talking to Jess when she brilliantly said I should just contact the military liaison in GA and they would get the message to Ryan. When I called the liaison, Sgt. Someone stated he was confident the message would be delivered. "Okay, that's great. Can you guarantee that he'll get it?" (I didn't want to take advantage of all this generosity if it was wasted.) "Well, no. I'm not the one working in the morning, but I can leave a message for the guy who is. And you can call back in the morning to remind him." Despite the odds, Rick said we would fly down there in hopes that Ryan got the message, called home, spoke with his parents, and knew we would pick him up shortly. Good enough for me! (Even though I was still anxious we wouldn't pull it off.)
It worked! We met Ryan and were able to fly him home by noon! The funeral was at 2pm. It was a very bittersweet day.
Rick, Gloria, Ryan, & Elayna with the company plane
Elayna's waking, so I won't go into all the Christmas details. But it was another marathon year. Here are a few pics and I'll post more later. (Elayna sticks her tongue out the same way Ryan does when he's trying to do something. Look at her intense and eager concentration on the toy he's got!)
Sweet! Another phone!
