On Saturday night the Cincinnati Cyclones were taking on the Evansville IceMen in an ECHL game. Karisma and Phillip Gallardo, from Covington, Kentucky, were in attendance for the game with everyone in the family except for their father. Their father is in the Army and has been deployed over in Afghanistan. Karisma and Phillip were selected for a ceremonial puck drop (which would have been already extremely awesome) and then to make things even better, the Cyclones brought out their father.
ABC News reported:
While Gallardo and his children shone in the spotlight on Saturday night, it was actually the other woman on the ice, Gallardo’s ex-wife and the kids’ mother, Fawn, who put the surprise reunion together
She got the idea after Karisma let it be known that she wanted a big surprise when her father returned, just like the other soldiers’ families she saw featured on TV and online.
“I’d planned on getting tickets to the [Cyclones] game on Saturday,” said Fawn Gallardo. “When I found out that he was flying in on Saturday, I thought, ‘It doesn’t get any better than that.”
ABC News also says that Gallardo hadn’t seen his kids in over a year, and that his kids were under the impression that they wouldn’t see him until April. Gallardo will now be with his kids until March 19th, when he has to return to his base in Kansas.
“It was extra nice to be able to surprise them. The best part was just being able to come out on the ice and to see their reaction when they saw me coming out.”
Such a great thing to do, teams should do this as much as they can.
[Puck Daddy Blog]