Times Square

Once again, a picture in an obituary seems to resuscitate some memories.

Certainly one of the most famous photos of all time is the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, August 14, 1945. WWII is over.

Of course famous is propelled by its appearance in Life magazine, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt, seen by millions, sold as a historic print, and taken on a momentous date in a crossroads location of an American city.

I’ve seen the photo many, many times. But only now have I paid enough attention to it to realize there are trolley tracks in the left section of the photo. Trolleys had long since stopped in running in NYC by 1945, but the remains of their tracks were still embedded in some streets. I remember seeing left-over tracks in the 1950s when I was a small boy. They took a while to completely disappear.

The photo seems to be taken in front of 1500 Broadway, the Paramount Theater building. It’s still there. Other buildings definitely are not.

The sailor hugging the left margin, walking a bit cross-legged might, have already been celebrating. Certainly can't blame him. Or, he's knocked a bit silly by watching a shipmate doing what he wished he'd been doing. It's a happy scene, no matter how you look at it.

The reason of course the photo was again in the paper was that the woman who is widely recognized as being the nurse in the photo has now passed away. Edith Shain, 91. The sailor has never been reasonably attributed to just one person. Several have said they were him.

There has never been the mystery over the photo like that surrounding the survival of the Czar's daughter, Anastasia. Alfred Eisenstaedt and the Life editors basically felt Edith certainly could be the nurse. There was no grand controversy. Thee was no fortune in a Swiss bank account.

And realistically there doesn't seem to be much more to it than that. And there isn't really. Except for me.

My mother was nurse in the Army and was born in 1918, like Edith. She didn't kiss a sailor that I was ever told, but I had to figure she kissed an Army Tech Sergeant, my father, before the war was over, because they were married before any armistice was reached.

They didn't met in Times Square, but rather in a Nashville hospital where my father had been shipped from Guam to recover from something. He was never too clear about what it was, but a Purple Heart was not involved. A pilonidal cyst (Jeep rider's disease) might have been. I've often wondered how you get sent from Guam to Tennessee to be admitted to an Army hospital, but that, like the certain identities of the sailor and the nurse, will remain a mystery.

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