It’s the ultimate homecoming image – a smiling family rushing to be reunited with a USAF officer in 1973 who spent years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, and his eldest daughter running forward, arms outstretched, feet off the ground.
“Explosion of Joy,” the famous black-and-white photo depicting the Sterm family at Travis Air Force Base in California, was published in newspapers across the country. Taken by Associated Press photographer Sal Vedder, it won a Pulitzer Prize and has continued to resonate over the years as a symbol of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
On Veterans Day, former Lt. Col. Robert Stirm, pictured in uniform with his back to the camera, died at a care facility in Fairfield, Calif., his daughter, Lori Stirm Kitching, confirmed Thursday. He was 92 years old.
“It’s right in my foyer,” Kitching, 68, of Mountain View, said of the photo. She was 15 years old when that moment she ran to hug her father is forever preserved on St. Patrick’s Day.
“The emotions of that and the intensity of feeling will never leave me,” Kitching told the AP in an interview. “It’s so deep in my heart, the joy and relief that our father is back again. It was truly a very touching reunion for our family, and that feeling has never left me. It’s the same feeling every time I see that picture.
She added: “And every day, I feel so grateful that my father was one of the lucky ones and came home.” That was truly a gift.”
Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron of the Royal Thai Air Force in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam on October 27, his F-105 Thunderbird was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was arrested immediately after landing.
He was held for 1,966 days in five different prisoner-of-war camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its prisoners, primarily shooting down American pilots during air raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late US Senator John McCain, whose plane was also shot down in 1967.
McCain and Sterm knew each other. They shared a wall in solitary confinement and communicated through eavesdropping code.
“John McCain used that joke,” Kitching said. “The first time my dad laughed in prison.” “I just wish I knew what the joke was,” she said. “I’m sure it was something very lewd.”
Stream, who was 39 when the photo was taken, told the AP 20 years later that he had several copies of it, but did not display them in his home. He was given a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release.
“I was radically changed and forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” the letter read in part. “Bob, I’m sure you know in your heart that we can’t make it together – and there’s no point in being miserable when you can do something about it. Life’s too short.”
The photo “brought me a lot of notoriety and publicity and, unfortunately, the legal situation that I would face, which was somewhat unwelcome,” Stirm said.
The couple divorced a year after Sterm returned from Vietnam and remarried within six months.
They get together for weddings and other family events. Loretta Adams died in 2010 of cancer. She was 74 years old.
“It was very painful,” Kitching said. “She told him she wanted to make the marriage work. But she was open and honest. So every story has two sides, and I know very well how difficult it is to understand both sides.”
Sterm retired from the Air Force in 1977 after 25 years of service. He joined Ferry Steel Products, a company his grandfather started in San Francisco. He also worked as a corporate pilot.