WWII veteran surprised by the young penpal he's wanted to meet for 12 years

It was 2009 and Dashauna Priest was a 3rd grader in Lorain, Ohio when her teacher assigned the class to write a letter to a veteran. The teacher’s father had been in the military, and it was an assignment she gave each year.

Priest’s letter ended up in the hands of World War II veteran Frank Grasberger on his way home from an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. “On the way back on the airplane I received the letter. We all received letters and I didn't open it until I got home and my wife opened it,” Frank recalls.

The letter read in part, “If it wasn’t for you we would never have freedom. I’m so happy you made sacrifices.” Grasberger and his wife Dee were moved by the letter and immediately wrote back. “I actually was the first one in the whole class to get my letter back and they read my letter to the class and then I took it home and my mom suggested that I put it away in my memory box,” Priest remembers.

The Grasbergers held on to the young girl’s letter as well and even attempted to get in touch with her over the next decade with no success. It wasn’t until 12 years later when Grasberger shared his story with the staff of his assisted living facility when the story’s next chapter began.

The staff tracked Priest down on social media and sent her a message to see if she would be interested in meeting her one-time pen pal. They both were still living in Ohio. Priest, who not only still had Grasberger’s letter but had recently re-read it, enthusiastically agreed.

What no one knew, is that Priest herself had grown up to join the military as well. “When I first got there, I got there in my uniform, and nobody knew that I was in the military. So, I just showed up in uniform and they were all like, ‘Are you the girl that wrote the letter? I was like, yeah’ So everyone started crying then.” But that was only the beginning of the flood of emotions that were to come.

Watch the video above to see the moment the pair finally came face to face.

Priest is a member of the Army National Guard and the mother of an infant. She hopes the story will encourage anyone who sees it to write letters to service members. She said, “It really means a lot just to see that somebody appreciates us and what we do for the country. So, if you ever want to write somebody, I think you should, because there's no telling how long they’ve been without talking to their families or anything like that. So, if you feel like you should write somebody or you want to just extend the extra ‘hey, I care about you,’ you should.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Thank you letter brings vet and child penpal together 12 years later