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Heroic Vietnam War veteran Robert Stirm — who appeared in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showing the excited reunion between the long-held prisoner of war and his family — has died, his family announced on Thursday.
He was 92 and died on Veterans Day.
The heartwarming black-and-white 1973 image by Associated Press photographer Sal Veder shows Col. Stirm, then 39, moments from embracing his wife and children as they greeted him at Travis Air Force Base in California with ear-to-ear smiles and outstretched arms.
His eldest daughter appeared ready to bear hug her father in the aptly named “Burst of Joy” photo after he spent 1,966 days — more than five years — in captivity when his F-105 Thunderbird was shot down during a bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967.
“Just the feelings of that and the intensity of the feeling will never leave me,” said Lorrie Stirm Kitching, who was 15 when the photo that now hangs in her foyer was snapped.
“It is so deep in my heart, and the joy and the relief that we had our dad back again. It was just truly a very moving reunion for our family, and that feeling has never left me. It’s the same feeling every time I see that picture,” the 68-year-old added.
“And every day, how grateful I am that my father was one of the lucky ones and returned home. That was really a gift.”
Stirm was shot three times as he parachuted down and captured once he hit land, enduring years of torment at five different POW camps, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton.”
One of his fellow POWs was the late Arizona Sen. John McCain. The two shared a wall in solitary confinement and communicated through tapping.
“John McCain tapped in this joke. First time Dad laughed in jail,” Kitching said.
“I just wish I knew what that joke was. I’m sure it was something very ribald.”
“Burst of Joy” quickly became an enduring symbol of the end of the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.
Though the photo went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, Stirm told the AP 20 years later he never displayed it around his house.
The image of jubilation concealed the end of his marriage after a chaplain handed him a “Dear John” letter from his wife mere days before he reached the base.
“I have changed drastically — forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” she wrote in part. “Bob, I feel sure that in your heart you know we can’t make it together — and it doesn’t make sense to be unhappy when you can do something about it. Life is too short.”
Stirm explained the picture “brought a lot of notoriety and publicity to me and, unfortunately, the legal situation that I was going to be faced with, and it was kind of unwelcomed.”
The couple ended up divorcing and both got remarried within the year.
“It hurt really deeply,” Kitching said. “She told him she wanted to make the marriage work. But she was being up front and honest. So every story has two sides, and I know very well just how difficult it is to understand the two sides.”
Stirm retired from the Air Force in 1977 after 25 years, joining Ferry Steel Products, a San Francisco business founded by his grandfather.
He was also a corporate pilot. He died at an assisted living facility in Fairfield, Calif.
With Post wires
English (US)