Blog
A Famous Photo and Its Sad Backstory
Posted by • October 09, 2015
Associated Press photographer Sal Veder’s iconic image of a family welcoming its POW dad home from Vietnam has personified the joy of freedom for more than 40 years.
Veder recently retold the story to The Guardian of how he got that Pulitzer Prize-winning image on March 17, 1973, at Travis Air Force Base in California. Bill Dowell, a long-ago colleague of mine, pointed out that the photo hardly hinted at the truth: The day after he was released from more than five years in captivity and before he was flown home to the States, Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm received a letter from his wife Loretta (2nd from right) telling him their marriage was over. There followed a protracted and bitter dispute between the returned POW and his wife that split the family asunder. That part was told by People Magazine on April Fools Day 1974.
