Award-Winning Life Magazine Photograph

The giant C-140 transport touched down with it's payload of American soldiers returning from a prison inside Vietnam.  It taxied onto the tarmac near the anxiously waiting crowd of family, friends and well wishers cordoned off by a security ribbon.  The tail door stairway dropped to the ground.  One by one the returning prisoners of war descend from the plane.  One particular soldier, dressed in his crisp khaki uniform and notably thinner than when he'd left, stepped out of the plane and onto the pavement.  And then it happened.

A little girl broke from the crowd, jumped over the security ribbon and raced toward the approaching soldier.  Her face beamed of joyful ecstasy, dark hair streaming in the airport wind, arms outstretched in a crooked sort of welcome.

The soldier spotted his little girl, dropped his military duffle bag, and in love's instinctive motion crouched and threw open his arms.

An enterprising photographer froze the moment in time for us.  As the camera shutter clicked it caught the little girl leaping off the ground, her feet no longer touching the earth, and throwing herself into her daddy's outstretched embrace.  Millions who read Life that month choked up over that black and white timeless portrait of love reunited.

A tiny glimpse of what the second coming of Jesus will be like.

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