February 1, 1973.

A photograph is published on the front page of the Bay Times.

A photograph taken in 1968.

Five years had done nothing to lessen the photograph’s weight and impact.

Neither have the subsequent five decades.

Many local readers of the Bay Times had probably seen the photo before. It was famous. It had appeared in other papers and magazines, and had even been televised on the nightly news with Huntley and Brinkley.

When first released, during some of the darkest days of the war in Vietnam, there was something in that photo that seemed to touch the collective American soul. There was something in it that was haunting. There was something that seemed to say everything anyone needed to know about what was happening in that far-off land.

What many of those local readers probably didn’t know until that chilly February day in’73 was that the famous…