Overview
- Stirm died on Veterans Day at an assisted living facility in Fairfield, California, at age 92, his daughter Lorrie Stirm Kitching confirmed.
- Shot down over North Vietnam on October 27, 1967, he spent 1,966 days in POW camps including the “Hanoi Hilton,” where he once traded taps through a wall with John McCain.
- He returned in Operation Homecoming, and Associated Press photographer Sal Veder captured his family reunion at Travis Air Force Base in an image that won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize.
- Three days before that public reunion, a chaplain delivered a “Dear John” letter from his wife; the couple divorced within a year as the celebrated photo contrasted with a painful reality.
- A decorated pilot with three Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit and a Distinguished Flying Cross, he retired from the Air Force in 1977 and later worked as a corporate pilot and in his family’s steel business.