Foster City’s Robert Stirm has been to hell and back. That’s not a cliché. That’s reality. It’s been half a lifetime since he was freed from a notorious North Vietnamese prison, nicknamed, in the gallows humor of the day, the Hanoi Hilton.
For Stirm, now 80, it’s still an unpleasant chore to recall his six-year incarceration, nearly one year of which was spent in solitary confinement, as a prisoner of war. His memories are stark and vivid. A U.S. Air Force pilot, his F105 fighter was shot down in October 1967 during a mission over the Hanoi area.
Next March will mark the 40th anniversary of his release. A photo of his family greeting him on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base in 1973 remains an iconic visual reminder of that tumultuous era.
Stirm, a 1950 graduate of San Mateo High School and an alumnus of College of San Mateo, grew up in leafy San Mateo Park. His horrific prison experience was a far cry from the suburban comforts of his family home on quiet Clark Drive.
Tortured, starved and denied meaningful medical care, Stirm, at one grim point, weighed less than 100 pounds, but he managed to survive. So did another San Mateo County POW, Ernest “Mel” Moore, a U.S. Navy pilot, who lnow lives in Coronado in the San Diego area.
See the photo and read the entire MercuryNews.com article here.
