GARDINER – Megan McGuire sat in a corner booth Wednesday evening at the Depot Sports Bar with her friends and family. Her mother-in-law, Mary McGuire, joined the group late.
She had planned to pick up her husband, Travis McGuire, at the airport Friday before heading to the Depot again to celebrate his homecoming from Afghanistan.
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Due to deliver the couple’s first child at the end of next week, Megan McGuire hadn’t seen her husband for eight months, shortly after they learned she was pregnant.
What she didn’t plan — or expect — was her husband walking through the door Wednesday evening with a bouquet of flowers in hand.
When she saw Travis, she stood up in surprise and the bar broke into applause.
She cried into his right shoulder while they held each other as friends, family members and onlookers clapped.
Megan McGuire, 25, said she didn’t know what to think when she saw Travis walk in. “I’m, like, trying to replay it in my mind,” she said.
Travis McGuire, 26, a specialist with the 101st Airborne Division, was granted leave to be with his wife during the birth of their first child, a baby girl due March 31.
Travis and Megan McGuire both graduated from Gardiner Area High School in 2005, but they didn’t start dating until shortly before he deployed to South Korea in August 2010.
“It’s been going good ever since,” Travis McGuire said, rubbing his wife’s pregnant belly.
He said they would video chat on Skype to stay connected while apart. They even found out the gender of their baby together.
Megan brought the results of the ultrasound home sealed in an envelope and waited to video chat with Travis before opening it.
“I take it day by day, and it was nice being around friends and family,” Megan McGuire said of the time apart. “It makes it a little bit easier.”
The couple lives in Kentucky, where Travis McGuire is stationed, but Megan moved back home to Chelsea last November to be with her family.
They plan to stay in Maine a week or two after the baby is born before heading back to Fort Campbell, Ky.
“When I left, she was just starting pregnancy. When I got back here, I’ve got to figure out how to hug her,” Travis McGuire said. “She’s a whole new woman.”
Paul Koenig can be contacted at 621-5663 or at:
pkoenig@mainetoday.com
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