Slava Veder, an Associated Press photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for a jubilant picture he took of an Air Force pilot returning home after five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam — a family reunion that was more complicated than it seemed — died on Aug. 22 at his home in El Dorado Hills, Calif., near Sacramento. He was 99.
The death was confirmed by his stepdaughter Kathleen Daly.
On March 17, 1973, Mr. Veder, known as Sal, jockeyed for position with several dozen photographers at Travis Air Force Base, about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco, as 20 former prisoners of war returned to the United States.
He noticed a family getting out of a station wagon on the tarmac and dashing toward a returning officer.
“I saw them out of the corner of my eye, turned and started shooting,” Mr. Veder told The Guardian in 2015. “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.”
The officer was Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Stirm. His daughter Lorrie, then 15, was running toward him, ahead of her sister, two brothers and her mother. Lorrie was smiling rapturously, arms outstretched, feet off the ground as if sprinting on air.
“It was like when you’re a little kid, and Santa is going to be coming, and you know it’s going to be amazing but you don’t know how amazing it’s going to be,” Lorrie Stirm Kitching, now 69, told The New York Times last November when her father died.
Mr. Veder rushed to develop the film in a makeshift darkroom that he had set up inside a women’s bathroom on the base. (Rival photographers from United Press International had taken the men’s bathroom.) His photograph, “Burst of Joy,” was published in newspapers across the country and won the Pulitzer for feature photography.
Because Lt. Col. Stirm, wearing his military uniform, had his back to the camera and his face hidden, he appeared almost anonymous — an Everyman representing all servicemen returning from Vietnam to their loved ones, Mr. Veder told Smithsonian magazine in 2005.
Donald M. Goldstein, a co-author of “The Vietnam War: The Story and Photographs” (1997), described the moment to the magazine as “a hero’s welcome for guys who weren’t always seen or treated as heroes.” After a lost war “that tore us apart,” Mr. Goldstein said, “it was finally over, and the country could start healing.”
What Mr. Veder wouldn’t learn for six months, he told The Guardian, was that the Stirm family’s joyful reunion concealed the agonizing end of a marriage. Three days before Lt. Col. Stirm returned home, he was handed what he called a “Dear John” letter — essentially a breakup letter from his wife, Loretta. In it, Loretta Stirm acknowledged that she’d had an affair, though it had ended before his return, Ms. Stirm Kitching said. The couple later divorced.
In retrospect, Mr. Veder told The Guardian, Lt. Col. Stirm — who was later elevated to the rank of colonel — appeared “stoic” and “very formal, very uptight, walking in a downbeat manner,” although at the time, “there was no indication why.”
Yaroslav John Veder was born in Berkeley, Calif., on Aug. 30, 1926. His parents, Ivan Vedernikov and Anka (Isvoschikova) Vedernikov, had settled in California three years earlier, after fleeing the Russian Revolution and spending time in Manchuria; in the United States, they changed their names to John and Ann Veder.
John Veder, who had studied chemical engineering in Kyiv, worked as a shift foreman for more than three decades at the Shell Oil refinery in Martinez, Calif. Ann was a teacher.
Slava, an only child, was largely self-taught as a photographer and began his journalism career as a sportswriter, he told The Guardian. One day, his boss told him, “Take this camera along with you and bring back some photos next time,” his stepson Tim Daly recalled.
He received commendations for his photography while attending Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, Calif., where he received an associate’s degree in 1959. He worked at The Tulsa World in Oklahoma and The Oakland Tribune in California before being hired as a staff photographer by The A.P. in 1961.
His portfolio included campus protests against the Vietnam War; the armed bank robbery trial of the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1976; and the 1978 assassinations of Mayor George R. Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk of San Francisco by Dan White, a former member of the board.
Mr. Veder told The Guardian that he was not aware that the A.P. had submitted “Burst of Joy” for Pulitzer consideration, saying he credited the prize to “pure fortune” of time and place.
His first marriage, to Jan (Wharton) Veder, ended in divorce in 1956. His second wife, Jean (Collard) Veder, died in 1968. He adopted her daughter, Kathryn, who died in 2001.
His third marriage, in 1972 to Petronella (de Vries) Veder, the mother of his surviving stepchildren Kathleen Daly, Tim Daly and Joni Ramirez, ended with Ms. Veder’s death in 2021. Another stepson, Tom Daly, died in 1998.
Colonel Stirm told Smithsonian magazine that he felt “ambivalent” about Mr. Veder’s prizewinning photograph. He was “very pleased to see his children” but “there was a lot to deal with.”
The two men became friends, Ms. Stirm Kitching said in an interview after Mr. Veder died, meeting with other former prisoners of war and exchanging Christmas cards. Mr. Veder attended Colonel Stirm’s surprise 80th birthday party in 2013 on the 40th anniversary of his repatriation from Vietnam. He had given Colonel Stirm a signed copy of the photograph, but Colonel Stirm never displayed it.
Ms. Stirm Kitching, on the other hand, keeps the reunion photograph in the foyer of her home near San Francisco as a gesture of welcoming.
“I’m so grateful Sal captured that moment,” she said. “I still feel the pull of the photo and the emotions.”
The post Slava Veder, Whose Camera Captured a Defining Vietnam Homecoming, Dies at 99 appeared first on New York Times.
