The Giant Killer
February 21, 2022
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The incredible story behind this picture of two Vietnam Vets that never knew each other meet on a chance encounter and create an iconic picture.

Vietnam veteran, Eddie Robinson, in a wheelchair, watching the Chattanooga Armed Forces Day parade with his child. This photograph won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977.

Chattanooga, Tennessee. May 15, 1976. Photo by Vietnam Vet Robin Hood.

“By the spring of 1976, the Vietnam War is over. But its effects are deeply embedded in the lives of millions.
Robin Hood learned a trade in Vietnam — he went over as an Army information officer and came back as a photographer. Eddie Robinson served in Vietnam, too. But the war took something away from him: his legs.

The two Veterans crossed paths at the Armed Forces Day Parade in Chattanooga, Tenn., on May 15, 1976. Hood is walking along the sidelines, taking pictures for the Chattanooga News-Free Press.

“I had just finished photographing a group of small Vietnamese children who had been relocated to Chattanooga as war refugees and were now watching the parade and waving small American flags.” Then Hood sees Robinson, in army fatigues, a rain poncho — and a wheelchair. “The thought occurred to me that here was a man who had made a supreme sacrifice for the Freedom of those (Vietnamese) children-” Hood releases the shutter. Robinson wistfully watches the parade and protects a child from the rain.

And the truth is that all Veterans pay with their lives... Some pay all at once, while others pay over a lifetime.
- JM Storm

Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., the first African-American general in the U.S. Army, watches a Signal Corps crew erecting poles, somewhere in France. August 8, 1944. His son, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., graduated from West Point and commanded the Tuskegee Airmen.

Flag displays with hidden drawers for NS Watches, to be raffled for the Night Stalker Association. Sapele, walnut, and Sycamore. Etched glass, hand cut dovetails.