“Burst of Joy”, 1973 that wasn't actually!
Burst of Joy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Associated Press photographer Slava "Sal" Veder, taken on March 17, 1973 at Travis Air Force Base in California.
The photograph came to symbolize the
End of United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and the prevailing sentiment that military personnel and their families could begin a process of healing after enduring the horrors of war.
Col Robert L. Stirm being reunited with his family, after spending more than five years in captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Stirm was shot down over Hanoi on October 27, 1967, while leading a flight of F-105s on a bombing mission, and was not released until March 14, 1973.
The centrepieceof photograph is Stirm's 15-year-old daughter Lorrie, who is excitedly greeting her father with outstretched arms, as the rest of the family approaches directly behind her.
Sad story behind the picture
The photo was the perfect prelude to a “Happily Ever After” story which included hardship, love, desperation, and homecoming. However there is more behind the scenes of this photograph.
Three days before Stirm returned home from Vietnam, he arrived in the Philippines for evaluation. An Air Force chaplain handed him a letter. His wife was ending their relationship. “I have changed drastically–forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” the letter said. “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.”
Upon his return to the states, the couple tried to work out their marriage, but within a year, the couple divorced.
Stirm remained in the military before retiring as a colonel in 1977 and settling in Foster City, California. He remarried but divorced again while his ex-wife Loretta remarried and moved to Texas.
Of the famous photograph, Stirm said, “I have several copies of the photo but I don’t display it in the house.” He does reiterates what he likes about the photograph, “I was very pleased to see my children—I loved them all and still do, and I know they had a difficult time—but there was a lot to deal with.”
The main issue he has with the famous photo is not the situation in which it was created – the return of a POW who endured unimaginable hardships – but of the woman in it. “In some ways, it’s hypocritical, because my former wife had abandoned the marriage within a year or so after I was shot down,” Stirm recounts. “And she did not even have the honor and integrity to be honest with the kids. She lived a lie. This picture does not show the realities that she had accepted proposals of marriage from three different men. . . . It portrays (that) everybody there was happy to see me.”
The four children see the photograph in a different light. They all have the picture mounted in their houses. “We have this very nice picture of a very happy moment,” Lorrie says, “but every time I look at it, I remember the families that weren’t reunited, and the ones that aren’t being reunited today—many, many families—and I think, I’m one of the lucky ones.”
Burst of Joy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Associated Press photographer Slava "Sal" Veder, taken on March 17, 1973 at Travis Air Force Base in California.
The photograph came to symbolize the
End of United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and the prevailing sentiment that military personnel and their families could begin a process of healing after enduring the horrors of war.
Col Robert L. Stirm being reunited with his family, after spending more than five years in captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Stirm was shot down over Hanoi on October 27, 1967, while leading a flight of F-105s on a bombing mission, and was not released until March 14, 1973.
The centrepieceof photograph is Stirm's 15-year-old daughter Lorrie, who is excitedly greeting her father with outstretched arms, as the rest of the family approaches directly behind her.
Sad story behind the picture
The photo was the perfect prelude to a “Happily Ever After” story which included hardship, love, desperation, and homecoming. However there is more behind the scenes of this photograph.
Three days before Stirm returned home from Vietnam, he arrived in the Philippines for evaluation. An Air Force chaplain handed him a letter. His wife was ending their relationship. “I have changed drastically–forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” the letter said. “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.”
Upon his return to the states, the couple tried to work out their marriage, but within a year, the couple divorced.
Stirm remained in the military before retiring as a colonel in 1977 and settling in Foster City, California. He remarried but divorced again while his ex-wife Loretta remarried and moved to Texas.
Of the famous photograph, Stirm said, “I have several copies of the photo but I don’t display it in the house.” He does reiterates what he likes about the photograph, “I was very pleased to see my children—I loved them all and still do, and I know they had a difficult time—but there was a lot to deal with.”
The main issue he has with the famous photo is not the situation in which it was created – the return of a POW who endured unimaginable hardships – but of the woman in it. “In some ways, it’s hypocritical, because my former wife had abandoned the marriage within a year or so after I was shot down,” Stirm recounts. “And she did not even have the honor and integrity to be honest with the kids. She lived a lie. This picture does not show the realities that she had accepted proposals of marriage from three different men. . . . It portrays (that) everybody there was happy to see me.”
The four children see the photograph in a different light. They all have the picture mounted in their houses. “We have this very nice picture of a very happy moment,” Lorrie says, “but every time I look at it, I remember the families that weren’t reunited, and the ones that aren’t being reunited today—many, many families—and I think, I’m one of the lucky ones.”
Source: weiki, history daily
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