Death of George Mendonsa, 95, probably the sailor on a famous photo

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George Mendonsa, who claimed in the most credible way to be the sailor shown kissing a woman in Times Square after the end of the Second World War on a photo became a national emblem of the world. exaltation, died Sunday in a retirement home, in Middletown, RI He was 95.

He died after an epileptic seizure, said Lawrence Verria, who, along with George Galdorisi, wrote: "The kissing sailor: the mystery behind the photo ending World War II" (2012).

On August 14, 1945, the illustrious photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt of Life magazine took the picture shortly after Japan learned that the Japanese had surrendered. Times Square was cluttered with people celebrating the end of the war, and Eisenstaedt's four-photo series showed a uniformed sailor holding a woman in a nurse's outfit, folding her back and kissing her deeply. The two anonymous people seemed to embody the exuberance of the moment, and the picture appeared on an entire page in Life.

Eisenstaedt did not record the names of the impromptu kissers; their identities have been debated for decades. Three women claimed that they were the woman in the photo. many people who have studied the question think that she was probably Greta Friedman.

In 1980 Edith Shain told Eisenstaedt that she was the woman on the photo and Life repeated it, asking the sailor to identify with the magazine. Dozens of men came forward, of whom at least 11 claimed to be photographed, but Mr Mendonsa claimed that he was that one. He sued Life in the 1980s, when the magazine had not definitively acknowledged he was the sailor, although the trial was unsuccessful.

"How many people in a life are doing something famous?" Asked Mr. Mendonsa during an interview with The Daily Mail in 1995. "There are no men in the Navy alive who did not serve in the Second World War and did not look at this photo and said, "I would like to be that guy." I was not looking for any financial gain. I only wanted recognition. "

Mr. Mendonsa was finally recognized by most parties after extensive testing. Among other efforts, in 2005, his face was carefully mapped in 3D, then reversed, to show that it corresponded to that of the sailor in the image of Eisenstaedt. Four years later, Norman Sauer, forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University, analyzed the photo and said he could find no inconsistency between Mr. Mendonsa's face and the sailor's face.

"The evidence is of an overwhelming nature," Verria said during a phone interview Monday. "No matter how you look at it, the story that it tells, the physical quirks that are peculiar to it, the fact that several experts in different fields have looked at the case and have come to the conclusion that it was George Mendonsa. "

"It was not really a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act than he had to go back to, I learned later," Friedman said. in a 2005 interview for the Veterans History Project. "The reason he caught someone dressed as a nurse, was that he felt very grateful to the nurses who cared for the wounded."

Mr. Verria stated that Ms. Friedman and Mr. Mendonsa became friendly and kept in touch after their meeting in 1980 and remained close until the death of Ms. Friedman in 2016.

Ms. Friedman told the Navy Times in 2012 that the day was so memorable that she understood Mr. Mendonsa's excitement. "I can not think of anyone who considered this an aggression," she said. "It was a happy event."

George Mendonsa was born February 19, 1923 in Newport, Ireland, Arsenio and Maria Mendonsa, immigrants from Portugal. His father was a fisherman and George left high school to start his trade before enlisting in the navy in 1942.

He served as quartermaster on the Sullivans, a destroyer in the Pacific. He was in charge of the ship in 1945 when an aircraft carrier was hit by suicide fighters. He had to help more than 100 US sailors floating in the water to reach a nearby hospital ship, where he saw nurses taking care of serious injuries.

"From that day on, I had a soft spot for nurses," Mendonsa told the Veterans History Project in 2005.

Mr. Mendonsa was on leave and with a new girlfriend in Times Square on V-Day. They watched a show when the victory was proclaimed and they rushed to a nearby bar before the kiss.

Mr. Mendonsa's girlfriend, Rita Petry, would have attended the kiss, but apparently it did not bother him. They married in 1946, after Mr. Mendonsa's release, and he returned to professional fishing.

She survives him, just like a girl, Sharon Molleur; a son, Ron; a sister, Hilda Todd; three grandsons; and four great-grandchildren.

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