Family surprises grandmother with a safe way to celebrate her 95th birthday in quarantine

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Good Morning America)

last updated 24 March 2020

There was no way Katie Byrne's family was going to let her celebrate her 95th birthday alone.

A big party had been planned to mark the occasion, but it was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Byrne — who has seven sons, 22 grandchildren, and 29 great-grandchildren — is self-quarantining in her Syracuse, New York, home, and her family found a way for them to all carefully spend part of her big day together.

On March 18, Byrne received a surprise visit from 18 of her relatives, who gathered a safe distance apart on her front lawn. They sang "Happy Birthday" and held up signs and balloons. "We were just giving her well wishes, letting her know we were thinking about her," granddaughter Sara Byrne told Good Morning America. She recorded the surprise, and the video shows her grandmother beaming and waving at her family from the front porch. Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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