Soldier surprises dad at building company where they both work

— -- Tanner Buttke, 21, surprised his dad, Scott Buttke, at Vogel Bros. Building Co. in DeForest, Wisconsin, the company where they both work, after returning home from a yearlong deployment.

“It was a set-up for my son to surprise me,” Scott Buttke, 47, told ABC News of the fake safety meeting the company held on Friday for the heartwarming reunion. “It’s a big company but a family-oriented company. They made it set up like a safety meeting type thing, talking about our core values, belief and mission in a big group of our contractors. Then at the end of the meeting, he says, ‘We want to show appreciation to our veteran,’ and Tanner walked in, and I just lost it.”

The father and son embrace in a big hug as all their fellow co-workers applaud.

Tanner Buttke had been deployed to Kuwait but was in Texas for the past two weeks before finally getting back home to see his family. His father had no idea he was back stateside.

“They couldn’t tell us where they were at,” Scott Buttke recalled. “He got really quiet these last couple weeks. I was just like, ‘Wow, he’s here.’ Being a dad, you don’t know what’s going on with these kids over there.”

Tanner Buttke has been planning this surprise homecoming since the second he left for deployment.

“I knew I wanted to surprise him right off the bat when I left because I always saw those videos and thought they were the coolest thing in the world,” he said. “I called up Vogel Bros. and they actually set it up for me. I wanted to surprise my dad at work and I was thinking it was real simple, but they wanted to do it up big.”

The soldier said he has no plans for redeployment as he only has a short time left on his contract.

“I was just ready to be home. I missed my parents,” said Tanner Buttke.

“It was a numbing weekend,” Scott Buttke said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Now the duo are looking forward to catching up with each other while working on Tanner Buttke’s car.

“He always has little projects,” the soldier said of his dad. “I love being out at his place and working around the house. We need a little time working on my car with each other. He’s been working on it because the car has one problem after another. When I showed up on Friday, he was like, ‘I was going to work on it this weekend.’ But now we can together.”