Military Dad Recreates Heartwarming Father-Son Photo 30 Years Later

— -- They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when Dallas English showed his father the photo he had recreated with his baby son 30 years after they had taken the original, he was almost speechless.

“He's not a man of many words,” English, 29, told ABC News, “but he did really like the picture.”

Ever since English, a staff sergeant in the Air Force, came back across the old photo of him and his dad from 1985, he knew he’d want to recreate it with his own child one day.

“It was probably like eight years or so ago that I came back across it at my dad’s in an old family album,” he recalled. “I came home late and was going through a bunch of the pictures and I made a copy of this one because it’s one of my favorites. As soon as I saw I thought to myself, ‘It would be really neat to recreate it when I have a son or a daughter.’”

Now that his son, Ace, is 10 months old, English finally got around to capturing the perfect shot on June 15. After English uploaded the almost identical photos to Reddit, the pictures have been viewed nearly 2.2 million times.

It’s a tradition that English would love his son to continue into a third generation if he chooses to join the military.

“It’s just a heritage-type thing,” he said. “I think it’ll be neat for him to look back on it to see his grandfather and dad as a baby, and then his dad and him as a baby. It’d be really awesome if he could do the same photo too in like 25 or 30 years.”

English, who has spent four years in Guam, two years in Turkey and did a deployment in Afghanistan, says he’ll do his best to keep the tradition alive.

“Remind me! July 15th, 2040,” he joked. "Make him take this pic with your grandson!"