Family Reunited at Cinderella’s Castle

Published: January 29, 2007 | 5418th good news item since 2003

Angie and Brian Davis were high school sweethearts, but fate tore them apart.

“He married someone else. I did. He had two other children. I got divorced. He ended up getting divorced,” Angie said. “And we found each other again. And we’ve been together ever since.”

Angie said that the two were soul mates with a vow to always stay together. But recently, Brian, a first sergeant in the National Guard, was called to duty.

Angie then wrote an essay to enter a “Good Morning America” contest to find a deserving family to be the first to spend the night in Cinderella’s castle at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The Davis family was chosen.

“My family so deserves this trip. This year has been really hard on us and next year will be even harder,” she wrote to “GMA.” “Got out of high school and moved in together and had Dallas.”

“My husband left June 6, 2006, for training to go to Iraq at Fort Sill, Okla.,” Angie wrote. “He left for Iraq on Sept. 18, 2006, and won’t be home until around September 2007.”

“I was just incredibly sad, and I didn’t want him to leave,” she said. “And I was mainly scared because we’re so close and we do everything together. And I know how much I needed him.”

Davis described her three children: an 11-, 10- and 8-year-old in the essay.

“Me and my sister and Dallas, we think about him every day,” said Kolton Davis, 8. “We hope he comes back alive.”

In the essay, Angie also wrote how precious her husband was to her.

“You have a hole there and any function that you do together as a family, you always have that hole there. And it’s Dad, and he’s missing,” she said.

The couple talks a couple of times a week, but it just isn’t the same.

“We were talking about him coming home and he says, ‘I can’t wait to actually see you talk to me,’” she said, laughing. “I said, ‘That will be too weird. We’re gonna have to talk on our cell phones on the couch to each other.’”

“He is our biggest hero and we are so proud of him,” she wrote in the letter. “Living without him during this time has taught us this but has also taught us how much we need him.”

Four months ago, they said goodbye and on Wednesday, they said hello again.

“We have never been able to go on a real family vacation before and hopefully you can help make this dream of ours come true,” she wrote. “Thank you, Angie Davis.”

Published in Reunited
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