Dear John/Joanne Letters, have you had one?

Coming Home -- To a war-weary nation, a U.S. POW's return from captivity in Vietnam in 1973 looked like the happiest of reunions

Carolyn Kleiner Butler, Smithsonian Magazine, January 2005

Sitting in the back seat of a station wagon on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base, in California, clad in her favorite fuchsia miniskirt, 15-year-old Lorrie Stirm felt that she was in a dream. It was March 17, 1973, and it had been six long years since she had last seen her father, Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm, an Air Force fighter pilot who was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and had been missing or imprisoned ever since. She simply couldn't believe they were about to be reunited. The minutes crept by like hours, she recalls, and then, all at once, the car door opened. "I just wanted to get to Dad as fast as I could," Lorrie says. She tore down the runway toward him with open arms, her spirits—and feet—flying. Her mother, Loretta, and three younger siblings—Robert Jr., Roger and Cindy—were only steps behind. "We didn't know if he would ever come home," Lorrie says. "That moment was all our prayers answered, all our wishes come true."

It remains the quintessential homecoming photograph of the time. Stirm, 39, who had endured gunshot wounds, torture, illness, starvation and despair in North Vietnamese prison camps, including the infamous Hanoi Hilton, is pictured in a crisp new uniform. Because his back is to the camera, as Veder points out, the officer seems anonymous, an everyman who represented not only the hundreds of POW's released that spring but all the troops in Vietnam who would return home to the mothers, fathers, wives, daughters and sons they'd left behind. "It's a hero's welcome for guys who weren't always seen or treated as heroes," says Donald Goldstein, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and a coauthor of The Vietnam War: The Stories and The Photographs, of the Stirm family reunion picture. "After years of fighting a war we couldn't win, a war that tore us apart, it was finally over, and the country could start healing."

But there was more to the story than captured on film. Three days before Stirm landed at Travis, a chaplain had handed him a Dear John letter from his wife. "I can't help but feel ambivalent about it," Stirm says today of the photograph. "I was very pleased to see my children—I loved them all and still do, and I know they had a difficult time—but there was a lot to deal with." Lorrie says, "So much had happened—there was so much that my dad missed out on—it took a while to let him back into our lives and accept his authority." Her parents were divorced within a year . . . .

My ex took off while I was deployed to Saudi for Desert Shield/Desert Storm... Yes, I am that old!! Luckily, when I returned I sat before a judge who was a retired LTC. I was divorced in 90 days and it cost me all of $90. I pawned everything she left behind. I spent an hour negotiating the price he would pay to an expectably low price and sent her the check, as agreed.

Are there really still "Dear John" letters? I thought that the current practice was to just change your Facebook status to "single" or the even more dreaded "it's complicated"? ;)

I did have a cat runaway while I was in the field. I took it pretty hard. I didn't even get a letter.

I'm not sure if this counts because I was not deployed but in basic training! Haha, I joined when I was 22 and was still dating my high school sweet heart and over a month of not hearing from him and him not answering my weekly calls, he sent me a letter and it basically said he couldn't do it and he had already slept with 2 other people.
Ironically, my husband also got a similar letter from his college girlfriend that he was in ROTC with, when he left to go to BOLC she sent him a FB message a week later breaking up with him and another week later was with someone else.
Even though it sucked for both of us, we call it fate!

I'll throw my dirty laundry way out there...... Mine took off with the kids and everything from the house when I was medevaced home in 2008. Apparently, there wasn't enough time to get Jody out of the house after Landstuhl sent me home a few weeks later. Good riddance. One of the best thing that ever happened to me. Who wants to be with anyone who is even capable of doing that so someone they "loved"?
It can alway be worse. There are horror stories of guys who committed suicides at the phone banks when we were at Al Asad in 2003, likewise in other locations. Very sad.

When I got stationed on Guam in 1969 I was still engaged to my College sweetheart, but she was in her Junior year when I dropped out and joined the Navy. She had graduated and we were still dating and had not set a date when I left the States. About 6 months later she wrote me and said that she had found someone else. Turned out to be her HS sweetheart. They were married that month. Took a few beers and some Metaxa, but soon recovered.

I got back to the States about a year later and she looked me up wanting to know if there was a chance of getting back together since her marriage had only lasted a few months. I did not bite, but wished her luck in her search.

My experience is backwards. I learned much about myself, and what i was capable of. when i returned home my fiancé wasn't thrilled about the person i had become, i was confident and more serious than ever about the path i wanted my career to go in. About a year later I had an FTX and when I came home i just moved out. I had written him a letter and left it behind, later we talked bout things but it was for the best. I'm now a successful E5 after only 3 years of service and I hold an E6 slot. I worked my tail off and I don't believe it would've been possible should we have stayed together.

Sometimes distance makes the heart grow fonder, and other times it makes you realize what you really want to achieve in life. For me I wanted to focus on my career, that wasn't possible to do together.

1LT Sandy Annala - Hit the ball clean out of the park! When I hear this hero stuff, many of us fail to realize that many of us represent what they have lost and to even justify it, they thank Veterans.

We should just take it in stride because we do know that it is not us but them and the men and women who came back from a war that had an effect our country long after Vietnam. People who were spit on and dad's who were called baby killers. I had to punch that kid even if he was much bigger.

So this article is as powerful as the little girl running naked. I mean really, that site would bring a tear to any living, sentient human being. This is the reality of war, MOABS, terrorism and threat of nuclear holocaust roll around in our heads while Servicemen's wives had the duty of keeping it together.

I have always felt and still do, that the wives are heroes and they do deserve help as part of our military family and like those love letters or Dear Johns and Joans, this is the human cost.

Never got one, but I think his name was Jody, because we sung about him all the time, lol
There was Jane, John (Joe) and Jody.
Here's a little reminder :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3A8Lxidkow