“This moment put magic into my life,” he told the Globe in 1988. Eisenstaedt shot four quick frames of Mr. Mendonsa kissing a stranger, Greta Zimmer Friedman, and a photo of their brief embrace became one of the era’s most iconic images. It was unforgettable for Mr. Mendonsa, too. George Mendonsa never doubted that he was the sailor in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo from Times Square, when news broke in 1945 that Japan had surrendered and World War II was ending. Mr. Mendonsa, a well-known commercial fisherman in Rhode Island, was 95 when he died early Sunday from complications of falling a short time earlier in an assisted living center. He had lived in Middletown, R.I., most of his life and would have turned 96 Tuesday. Advertisement On leave after serving in the Pacific during World War II, Mr. Mendonsa was in New York City on Aug. 14, 1945, on just his second date with Rita Petry, whom he would marry the following year. “My date and I were at Radio City Music Hall watching a show. They stopped the show and made the announcement that the war was over,” he recalled in a 2015 interview with boston.com. “So my date and I came out into Times Square, and of course Times Square was wild.” While serving in the Pacific aboard the USS The Sullivans, Mr. Mendonsa had witnessed nurses heroically tending to the critically injured after two kamikaze pilots attacked the USS Bunker Hill aircraft carrier during the invasion of Okinawa. About three months later, he was on leave in Times Square when Japan’s surrender was announced. While walking with Rita, he spotted a woman dressed in white and thought she was a nurse, though Friedman actually was a dental assistant. Caught up in his memories of Okinawa and the emotions of the moment — people were embracing all around — Mr. Mendonsa reached for Friedman, kissed her, and then they went their separate ways. Advertisement In a 2005 interview with the Veterans History Project, Friedman recalled that everyone around was celebrating. The kiss, she said, “wasn’t a romantic event. It was just an event of, ‘Thank God the war is over.’ ” The photo became popularly known simply as “The Kiss.” “People tell me that when I am in heaven they will remember this picture,” Eisenstaedt once said. George Mendonsa posed for a photo in Middletown, R.I., holding a copy of the famous Alfred Eisenstadt photo of him kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman in Times Square on Aug. 14, 1945. AP/Providence Journal via AP The photographer’s two unnamed subjects, however, became the subject of debate decades later. Life Magazine ran a full-page display of the photo in 1945, and in 1980, the company said that anyone who thought they were part of the couple should step forward. Several men did, but Mr. Mendonsa was always sure he was the sailor, especially after he saw Eisenstaedt’s three outtake photos. A sleeve insignia he hadn’t yet sewn on his uniform was stuffed in his pocket, and an “M” — part of a GM tattoo for his initials — was visible on his arm. The most significant evidence, though, was the woman he wasn’t kissing. Rita Petry’s face was visible over his shoulder. In 2012, Rhode Island history teacher Lawrence Verria and retired Navy captain George Galdorisi published “The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II.” After consulting with experts in facial recognition and forensic anthropologists, along with examining hairlines, knuckles, noses, and the tattoo, they concluded that Friedman and Mr. Mendonsa were the couple in the photo. Advertisement In 1987, Mr. Mendonsa sued Life, claiming that the magazine hadn’t given him proper credit for being the sailor in the photo. He told the Globe the following year that he wasn’t interested in the money the suit might bring, and said he planned to give any funds beyond legal fees to charity. The suit was settled in October 1988, with an attorney for the company saying that Life “was never able to identify the sailor.” In the Globe interview, Mr. Mendonsa said the suit had been motivated in part by wartime memories, and the scene he witnessed at Okinawa that prompted the iconic Times Square kiss. “I know it sounds kind of funny, but people like me don’t often do something famous, regardless how insignificant it seemed at the time,” he said in 1988, his eyes tearing. “I owe it, in part, to the men I served with.” One of five siblings, George Mendonsa was born in Newport, R.I., a son of Arsenio Mendonsa and Maria DeSa, immigrants from Madeira, Portugal. Mr. Mendonsa played high school football in Newport, and “one day he came home and told his father, ‘I quit the team and quit the school,’ ” said Jerry O’Donnell, a longtime friend of Mendonsa family and former Middletown neighbor. “His father said, ‘Put your boots in the truck.’ He was a commercial fisherman from that day on.” Advertisement As a food provider, Mr. Mendonsa had a military deferment, but he joined the Navy, anyway, and entered boot camp on Thanksgiving Day in 1942, O’Donnell said. Mr. Mendonsa went on to serve aboard the USS The Sullivans, named for the five Sullivan brothers who had been killed in action. After the war, he worked for Tallman & Mack, the fishing company his family bought. He kept going out onto the waves captaining the Maria Mendonsa, named for his mother, until he was 82, even after his family sold the company, O’Donnell said. Mr. Mendonsa formerly served on the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council, including during the mid-1980s, a time of contentious discussions about the striped bass harvests. “His 6-foot-2 frame was imposing, and his hands were as large as ham hocks,” Dick Russell wrote in a lengthy 1984 Globe account of the disputes. “His weathered face bespoke a lifetime in the elements.” In addition to his wife, Rita, Mr. Mendonsa leaves his daughter, Sharon Molleur of Portsmouth, R.I.; his son, Ron of Florida; a sister, Hilda Todd of Tiverton, R.I.; three grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. A funeral Mass will said at 10 a.m. Friday in St. Mary’s Church in Newport. Burial will be in St. Columba Cemetery in Middletown, R.I. Though Mr. Mendonsa was immortalized kissing Friedman — she was just Greta Zimmer at the time, and had walked to Times Square from the dental office where she worked — he only had eyes for Rita, his soon-to-be wife. Advertisement They had met through family — Rita was the niece of his brother-in-law’s parents. “When I saw their niece, I went, ‘Holy Jesus, she’s beautiful,’ ” he told boston.com in 2015. “If you saw her,” he added, “then you’re not surprised why I married her.” Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.<doc-sep>George Mendonsa, a World War II veteran whose claim of being a sailor kissing a nurse in an iconic image was verified using facial recognition technology, died early Sunday, his daughter said. He was 95. Mendonsa was living in an assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, and had been suffering from severe congestive heart failure, daughter Sharon Molleur told NBC News. He would have turned 96 on Tuesday, she added. Mendonsa, a retired fisherman, had maintained for years that he was the sailor locking lips in a picture taken on Aug. 14, 1945, by Alfred Eisenstaedt and published in Life magazine as a scene from "V-J Day in Times Square." On that day, Americans crowded the streets to celebrate the Japanese surrender to the Allies and the end of the war. George Mendonsa, 89, at his Middletown, Rhode Island home in 2012, holding the iconic photograph by Life Magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Patrick Raycraft / Hartford Courant/MCT via Getty Images file The photo has become one of the most enduring images of the 20th century. But when it was published in Life, there was no caption confirming the identities of the pair. Over the decades, other sailors asserted that they were the mystery man in the photo, including a Texas veteran who used a police forensic artist in Houston to lay claim to the identity in 2007. Mendonsa, however, didn't budge. He said besides remembering the exact moment of the kiss, physical indicators such as the man's large hands and the scar on the brow was evidence it was him. To get to the heart of Mendonsa's claim, Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi, authors of the 2012 book "The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo that Ended World War II," looked at facial recognition technology used by experts from the Naval War College and also conducted interviews to help rule out the bogus declarations. Mendonsa told Verria that he was on leave in Manhattan when the end of the war was announced, and he was so swept up in the moment that when he saw a young nurse he felt compelled to kiss her. Neither Mendonsa nor the nurse — whose identity was similarly unknown, but was later confirmed to be dental assistant Greta Zimmer Friedman, of Virginia — knew at the time that the random kiss was captured for posterity. Friedman died in 2016 at age 92. Molleur said her father never gave up his claim to being in the photo, and lived proudly with the legacy that has lived on in giant statues and recreations. "He was very proud of his service and the picture and what it stood for," Molleur said. "Always, for many, many years later, it was an important part of his life."<doc-sep>
For 74 years, Mendonsa maintained that he was the sailor in the photo, but he was never able to convince Life magazine, which published the photo, one of four taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, as "V-J Day in Times Square." MIDDLETOWN — George A. Mendonsa, who claimed to be the sailor kissing the nurse in the iconic photo taken in Times Square at the end of World War II, and whose claim was verified by recent technology, died early Sunday, two days short of his 96th birthday. Mendonsa's daughter, Sharon Molleur of Portsmouth, said he and her mother, who had been married more than 70 years, lived in an assisted living facility in Middletown. Molleur said she got a call at 1:30 a.m. Sunday saying that he had fallen and, moments later, had a seizure and died. For 74 years, Mendonsa maintained that he was the sailor in the photo, but he was never able to convince Life magazine, which published the photo, one of four taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, as "V-J Day in Times Square." Lawrence Verria, coauthor with George Galdorisi of "The Kissing Sailor," published in 2012 by the Naval Institute Press, met Mendonsa "strictly as a topic of research." His goal was to "find out who was in the pictures and let him tell the story." Results of facial recognition technology and the conclusions of experts in photography and forensic anthropology ruled out all the other sailors. "The evidence is so overwhelming." Verria said Sunday night. "There really is no doubt.... This man deserves the credit during his lifetime." In a piece written Sunday and intended for the Providence Journal's Commentary page, Verria, 57, head of the social studies department at North Kingstown High School, called Mendonsa a national treasure. A fisherman and the son of a fisherman, Mendonsa knew how to handle a boat. In the Navy during WWII, he successfully maneuvered his destroyer through Typhoon Cobra, which flipped three other destroyers, Verria said. Mendonsa was at the helm of The Sullivans, named after the five brothers who were all serving on the USS Juneau and all died when it sank during World War II. Mendonsa also told Verria why he kissed the woman in the nurse's uniform in Times Square. The Sullivans had been sent to rescue the survivors of the USS Bunker Hill after a kamikaze attack, and he was steering when it pulled alongside the Bountiful, a nursing ship, to transfer the wounded. Mendonsa watched from the helm as the nurses worked on the sailors. "They were in a bad way," he kept saying, when he told the story to Verria. He happened to be in Times Square, on leave, when the end of the war was announced. "He sees the nurse, he can't help himself," Verria said. The woman in white symbolized the nurses he saw helping those sailors he had helped rescue, and he grabbed her and kissed her. "It's what everybody was doing on August 14, 1945," Verria said. "Everybody was kissing and hugging. As soon as the kiss was over, they went their separate ways," and neither knew of the picture until years later. Besides his wife and daughter, Mendonsa also leaves a son, Ron Mendonsa, who lives in Florida. Molleur said arrangements for her father's funeral have not been made. "George Mendonsa just won me over," Verria said Sunday night. "He really was bigger than life." — dnaylor@providencejournal.com (401) 277-7411 On Twitter: @donita22