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Dec. 29--It wasn't the way to Boalsburg.
That much Patricia Noonan knew soon after leaving her State College house. They weren't going to pick up a large gift, as her sister claimed, at 8:30 p.m. on the night before Christmas Eve. They were headed for University Park Airport.
Noonan guessed why.
Her son, Parker, a senior airman at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, was coming home for the holidays. Her sister remained coy.
At the airport, Noonan waited, anxious about not practicing the piano for church services, eager to spot her son coming through the terminal door. She would spend Christmas with one of her grown children after all.
She was half-right.
In walked a uniformed figure.
And Jamie Noonan embraced her mother.
A winning Powerball ticket couldn't have been more stunning. Staff Sgt. Noonan was supposed to be in Iraq with the Army Reserves on her second tour. A newspaper Christmas story said so. Her mother, telling friends that soldiers at war don't receive holiday furloughs, expected to see reindeer in her kitchen before her daughter.
"Oh my goodness, I just broke down like I've never broke down before," Patricia Noonan said. "I just wailed. I grabbed her and held on."
Minutes passed while passengers filed by the pair. Noonan kept crying. Her daughter, a combat veteran at 23, started. Beverly Fulcher, who alone bore her niece's secret, shed tears.
"It was the best Christmas present, just to have her home," Jamie's father, John Noonan, said.
She had pulled this stunt before, two years ago, traveling from her Oklahoma base to show up at her parents' doorstep for Thanksgiving.
This time required extra effort. At Camp Anaconda in Iraq, she turned down leaves in hope of receiving a coveted holiday slot. Then, she hopped from Kuwait to Germany to Atlanta, where security officials, inspecting a snow globe in her duffel bag, made her miss a connection to Cleveland.
All the planning and the hassles were worth the trouble, however, when she appeared before her mother like a vision in desert fatigues.
"I won't say she's stubborn, but when she gets an idea in her head she'll find a way to see it through," her father said.
After an all-night drive with her parents, she delivered one more surprise.
About 5:30 a.m., in Kentwood, Mich., a phone call woke David Rutgers. The sleepy Army recruiter heard a familiar voice.
"Do you believe in Santa Claus?" his fiancee said.
Seconds later, his doorbell rang.
Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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