Robert Stirm, Air Force lieutenant colonel in iconic Vietnam War photo “Burst of Joy,” dies at 92
Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Stirm, the man captured in the iconic “Burst of Joy” photo at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, has died at the age of 92, his family announced.
Stirm died on Veterans Day morning.
He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for five years. When he was discharged and returned home to Travis Air Force Base in 1973, an iconic photo showed his daughter running toward her father.
AP Images/Slava Veder 
Five decades later, in April, Stirm’s daughter, Lorrie Kitching, spoke with CBS Sacramento to reflect on this moment. Kitching, with her arms outstretched in the photo as she runs toward her father, was 15 years old at the time.
“It’s just a glorious moment of my dad coming home to his family,” Kitching said.
Kitching kept the letters his father wrote from the prison camp.
“I am so proud of my teenage daughter,” one of the letters read.
One of Stirm’s prison comrades was the late Sen. John McCain, who was shot and killed a day before him.
The “Burst of Joy” was taken by Associated Press photographer Slava Veder and won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 1974.
