Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Slava "Sal" Veder, best known for his picture of an Air Force lieutenant colonel joyfully reuniting with his family after five years in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam, has died. He was 99. His family said the retired AP photojournalist died Aug. 22 in his sleep at his home in El Dorado County, California, outside Sacramento, the AP reports. In March 1973, the San Francisco Bay Area native was sent to Travis Air Force Base for the arrival of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and other prisoners returning from Vietnam. Veder was in a crowded bullpen jockeying with dozens of other photographers when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Stirm's four children begin to gallop toward their father.
"You could tell, even at a distance, what they were feeling. It was all over them, their faces, the way they all broke into a run," Veder told the Guardian in 2015. "There was a surge of emotion from the crowd, too." Using a makeshift darkroom in a women's bathroom on base, Veder cranked out six images, including "Burst of Joy," which won the 1974 Pulitzer in feature photography. Veder noted that in the photograph, Stirm has his back to the camera, rendering him an everyman soldier returning to the undeniable joy and excitement on the faces of his children. The photo became a symbol of the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War. But for Stirm, it represented heartbreak, as he had been handed a "Dear John" letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release. The couple divorced a year later. Stirm died in 2025.
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