Wisconsin Marine Comes Home To Fulfill 5-Year-Old’s Wish To Santa

APPLETON, WI — Five-year-old Drake Nieland's wish for Christmas was simple. In contrast to some of the longer lists kids handed Santa at Saturday’s Light Up Appleton holiday kickoff celebration, Drake wanted a single thing: For his daddy to come home to him and his 3-year-old brother, Harley.

They hadn’t seen their dad, Marine Sgt. Troy Nieland, since his deployment to Japan seven months ago. For little boys like Drake and Harley, that seemed like a lifetime ago.

That Santa. He sure has some kind of connections. What to the boys’ wondering eyes should appear, but their Daddy, kneeling before them in his sharp Marine dress blues.

For a moment, Drake and Harley stood in stunned silence. But then it dawned on them. Daddy really was home.

Don’t tell the boys, but the credit for the pre-holiday reunion doesn’t go to Santa.

Tony and Mary Nieland cooked up their surprise, working with friends and the staff at the Trout Museum of Art, where the Light Up Holiday event was held.

“It’s really exciting for me to know that they’re getting, like, the biggest surprise of their life today,” Mary Nieland told news station WBAY.

Tony said he was “pretty nervous coming in here, pretty excited, jittery,” but those feelings melted when he saw his sons.

“Honestly,” he said, “none of it really felt real until right in this moment when I walked in the tent.”

Time with family is precious, the Marine said.

“You don’t realize how much you miss until you’re gone for that amount of time,” he said.
With a special gift from Santa, the family plans to pack as many memories as possible into Troy Nieland’s leave.

“It makes me feel really good knowing that’s what he wanted, and we were able to make that happen,” he said.

» Watch the moment the boys saw their father on WBAY.