HUMAN EMOTIONS ARE SIMILAR ON THE PLANET: "RETURN OF A VIETNAM WAR POW TO HIS FAMILY"

                                    

HUMAN EMOTIONS ARE SIMILAR ON THE PLANET: RETURN OF A VIETNAM  WAR  POW TO HIS FAMILY 

On 17 March 1973, at Travis Air Force Base, Lt Col Robert L. Stirm( POW) ,  shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and held for 1,962 days , stepped off a C-141 during Operation Homecoming with a" Dear John"  letter from his wife folded in his pocket. Fifty yards away, his fifteen-year-old daughter Lorrie, who had not seen him since she was nine, tore from a station wagon with both feet off the ground and arms too wide for her body, whilst behind her, her mother clutched crushed white flowers and her three siblings ran, laughing. AP photographer Sal Veder, who later won the Pulitzer for this  frame he called it "Burst of Joy" ,  said he could feel the energy in the air. For that five-hundredth of a second, there was no war, no letter, no divorce to come: only a father who had returned from the dead, and a daughter  who had finally learned how to fly.

( Avtar Mota )

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