On March 17, 1973, near the end of the Vietnam War, Associated Press photojournalist Slava Veder photographed the reunion of a released prisoner of war with his family.
The “Burst of Joy” image, which was taken at California’s Travis Air Force Base, would be awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1974.
“….The minutes crept by like hours, she recalls, and then, all at once, the car door opened. ‘I just wanted to get to Dad as fast as I could,’ Lorrie says. She tore down the runway toward him with open arms, her spirits — and feet — flying. Her mother, Loretta, and three younger siblings — Robert Jr., Roger and Cindy — were only steps behind. ‘We didn’t know if he would ever come home,’ Lorrie says. ‘That moment was all our prayers answered, all our wishes come true.’
Associated Press photographer Slava ‘Sal’ Veder, who’d been standing in a crowded bullpen with dozens of other journalists, noticed the sprinting family and started taking pictures. ‘You could feel the energy and the raw emotion in the air,’ says Veder, then 46, who had spent much of the Vietnam era covering antiwar demonstrations in San Francisco and Berkeley….”
— “Coming Home”
Smithsonian Magazine, January 2005
The Newseum‘s interview with photojournalist Slava Veder describes that day:
The Daily Herald, from Provo, Utah, published the image on page one.
“The photo of Colonel Robert Stirm being reunited with his family became symbolic of the end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Stirm was a prisoner of war for more than five years, having suffered gunshot wounds, torture, illness, and starvation. Stirm’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Lorrie, is featured with her arms extended. After making the photo, Sal rushed to a makeshift darkroom located in the ladies’ bathroom on the base while his colleague Walt Zeboski processed the film. The image was sent over the news-service wires and published around the nation the following day.”
— “Photographers Behind The World’s Most Iconic Pictures Revealed”
Huffington Post, February 2015
This final example of the historic photo comes from the Pennsylvania newspaper, the Leader-Times:
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