Soldier gets powerful welcome home  

Army Capt. John Pelikan had no idea that his 1968 Ford Mustang would be sitting in the backyard Saturday, restored to its open-highway glory in a gesture of chrome-plated love.

Well, maybe he knew something was up.

Pelikan had returned home five days earlier than expected from a 15-month deployment in Afghanistan. His family told him that the old Mustang — which his mother, Tamera, called “the other woman in his life” — was in the shop having the radiator fixed. Before he deployed, Pelikan had asked his father to get the car repaired.

So, he admits he had wondered since his return home, “‘What else are they doing?’ They told me they were making it reliable,” he said, “and getting it running again.”

Instead, family and friends (and the custom builders at an automobile restoration shop) pooled their money to have the Mustang “pimped out,” with classy restraint.

Pelikan, who inherited the car from family after graduating from high school in Twentynine Palms, Calif., saw the restored Ford on Saturday morning for the first time.

Fifteen relatives, including kin from California, New York and Colorado, gathered to catch his reaction at his grandparents’ home.

As he walked onto the back porch of Pelikan’s hazel eyes locked on the “muscle car.” The black of that Ford Mustang body shone in the morning sunlight like a pair of polished church shoes. It sat waiting for his approval, parked under the limbs of a tall pine before a banner that read, “Welcome Home John/ We Love You/ From Your Family and Friends.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” he said, approaching the vehicle. “It’s awesome.”

“Holy cow,” he added, with a huge grin on his face as he opened the driver’s door and inspected the remodeled interior.

“Very nice.”

Since returning from his deployment, the 32-year-old had been talking about what he wanted to do with the car. He had set aside some money and intended to redo the interior. Under his ownership, the car never had a functioning heater and it didn’t have air conditioning.

Capt. Pelikan has driven the Mustang cross-country on four occasions. The car has been with him throughout his military career. “Every little bit of work I’ve done on it — every improvement — sort of matches some major step in my life. It’s connected with my life,” he said.

“This is incredible,” he said. “How could you not like this?”


What a nice story, i had to share this with you all on here. How wonderful of his family to do this for him, what a great surprise. What do you think?