Airman 1st Class Daylon Twigg originally told his sister he wouldn't be able to make it.
Older sisters don’t normally like when their little brothers play pranks on them, but this college graduate couldn’t be happier when her airman sibling made a surprise appearance at her graduation.
“She screamed a lot louder than I thought she would,” Airman 1st Class Daylon Twigg told InsideEdition.com. “It made me jump too, but I guess you could say it was the reaction I was hoping for.”
Graduation day at Harding University in Buffalo, New York, was the first time in three years 22-year-old Makayla Twigg and her younger brother have seen each other.
“It was mind-blowing,” Daylon said. “I was like, goodness gracious, I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Daylon was stationed in Misawa, Japan, for the last two years, and missed holidays and birthdays since he wasn’t able to come home the entire time.
When he was moved to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, he insisted on going home for his sister’s graduation.
“I was like, ‘I just want to let you guys know in advance I’m going to be going to this and I can't miss it for the world,’” he said.
But he told Makayla a different story.
“A few weeks before graduation he was like, ‘I can't come. I have to work,'” Makayla said. “He just got to a new station in Idaho so he was like, ‘I have a lot of training, I can't come.' So I was really upset and avoided his phone calls for a while.”
Daylon added, “She was heartbroken. She sounded so mad at me. She hung up the phone the first time I told her. She didn’t want to talk to me.”
Little did she know, he had worked hard to organize a nice surprise for her, originally planning to be the one to hand her the diploma until his arrival was delayed and he ended up missing the ceremony.
Instead, Daylon emerged from behind a poster as Makayla was taking photos and caught her emotional reaction on camera.
“She’s honestly the best person I could ever ask for,” Daylon said of his sister. “My best friend, my rock, basically. When we were kids, we fought a lot but as we grew up, we just realized we argued over small stuff, stuff that we should have never argued about and we grew a lot closer.”
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