Vietnam War POW Robert Stirm, seen in iconic ‘Burst of Joy’ photo with family, dies at 92

It’s the ultimate homecoming photo – a smiling family rushing to reunite with a U.S. Air Force officer in 1973 who spent years as a POW in North Vietnam, his oldest daughter sprinting ahead with her arms outstretched, both feet off the ground.

“Burst of Joy,” the iconic black-and-white image capturing the Stirm family at Travis Air Force Base in California, was published in newspapers throughout the nation. Taken by Associated Press photographer Sal Veder, it won a Pulitzer Prize and has continued to resonate through the years, a symbol of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

On Veterans Day, retired Col. Robert Stirm, seen in the photo in uniform with his back to the camera, died at an assisted living facility in Fairfield, California, his daughter, Lorrie Stirm Kitching, confirmed Thursday. He was 92.

“It’s right in my front foyer,” Kitching, 68, of Mountain View, said of the photo. She was 15 when that moment of her running to hug her father was forever preserved.

“Just the feelings of that and the intensity of the feeling will never leave me,” Kitching told the AP in an interview. “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.

“And every day, how grateful I am that my father was one of the lucky ones and returned home,” she added. “That was really a gift.”

Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron based in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam that Oct. 27, his F-105 Thunderchief was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was captured immediately upon landing.

He was held captive for 1,966 days in five different POW camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its captives, primarily American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who also was shot down in 1967.

McCain and Stirm had known each other. They shared a wall in solitary confinement and communicated through a tapping code.

“John McCain tapped in this joke. First time Dad laughed in jail,” Kitching said. “I just wish I knew what that joke was,” she said. “I’m sure it was something very ribald.”

Stirm, who was 39 when the photo was taken, told the AP 20 years later that he had several copies of it, but didn’t display it in his house. He had been handed a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release.

“I have changed drastically – forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” the letter read 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 said the photo “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 divorced a year after Stirm returned from Vietnam and both remarried within six months.

They came together for weddings and other family events. Loretta Adams died in 2010, of cancer. She was 74.

“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 of service. He joined Ferry Steel Products, a business his grandfather started in San Francisco. He also had worked as a corporate pilot.

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This story has been corrected; Stirm was flying in a F-105 Thunderchief, not Thunderbird, when shot down.