Children, military parents reunite

ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) - Christmas came a few weeks early for a couple of children whose parents surprised them at school Monday after returning from deployment.

Kindergartner Malcolm Wright and third-grader Dwight Lutz spent their mornings reading in class, without a clue of what was waiting for them in their school's cafeteria.

Dwight was a little caught off guard when he saw his mother and father, as was Malcolm whose father met him in the lunch line.

"That was awesome. It couldn't have been any better."

Both Dwight's mother and father were deployed over the summer, but he was kept up to date by his grandmother.

"If she tells him it's gonna be 30 days, he'll start counting every day he wakes up," Dwight's father Sgt. Scott Lutz said. 

Malcolm's mother said he has been waiting for the day his father would come home.

"He always asks, 'When is he gonna come back? I wish somebody could go replace him so he can come back home," Terral Wright said.

"It has been extremely tough," Staff Sgt. Thomas Wright said.