'Burst of Joy' photographer Sal Veder, who captured Vietnam War's most iconic homecoming, dies at 99

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Slava "Sal" Veder, whose photograph of a US Air Force officer reuniting with his family after years as a prisoner of war became one of the defining images of the Vietnam era, has died at the age of 99.


His family confirmed on Wednesday that Veder, a retired Associated Press photographer, passed away in his sleep at his home in El Dorado County, California, near Sacramento. He died on August 22, just eight days before he would have turned 100.


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Veder, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, was 46 in March 1973 when AP sent him to Travis Air Force Base to cover the homecoming of freed prisoners of war, including Lieutenant Colonel Robert L Stirm. Squeezed into a crowded press pen alongside dozens of other photographers, Veder caught sight of Stirm's four children sprinting toward their father the moment he stepped off the tarmac.

Working out of a makeshift darkroom set up in a base bathroom, he processed six frames from the scene, one of which, "Burst of Joy," went on to win the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Veder later pointed out that the image worked because Stirm's face is turned away from the camera, allowing him to stand in for every returning soldier while the unguarded joy on his children's faces carried the emotion of the picture.

The photograph came to represent the end of America's involvement in Vietnam, but the moment it captured was more complicated for Stirm himself. He had been handed a "Dear John" letter from his wife Loretta just before landing, and the couple divorced within a year. Stirm died in 2025.

Born Slava J Veder on August 30, 1926, in Berkeley, California, he was the only child of Russian immigrants Ivan and Anka Veder, who anglicised their names to John and Ann after settling in the US. He began his career as a sports writer and news editor before joining the Associated Press as a staff photographer at its Sacramento bureau in 1961. He later moved to the AP's San Francisco office, where he was based at the time he shot "Burst of Joy."

His daughter, Kathleen Daly, said journalism was central to who he was rather than simply a job, adding that the AP had given him a place where his work was valued. Former colleagues and friends described him as modest and warm, with a fondness for ice skating and sailing, who made a habit of mentoring younger photographers and checking in on the people around him. Freelance photographer Brad Mangin recalled him as the first Pulitzer winner he ever met and remembered him as an unusually kind man, while retired AP photographer Eric Risberg credited Veder with teaching him to look for the story behind a picture rather than the image alone.

Over a long career, Veder photographed former California governor Ronald Reagan, campus protests against the Vietnam War, the bank robbery trial of Patty Hearst, and the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

Veder, who raised five children, retired from the AP in 1993 and settled in the small El Dorado County community of Camino. He is survived by three children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

(With inputs from AP)