Pic: ABC7 NewsWASHINGTON: Greta Friedman, the woman in white kissed by a sailor in New York’s Times Square in a photograph symbolizing the end of World War Two, has died at age 92, media reports said on Saturday (Sept 10).
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Friedman, who fled Austria during the war as a 15-year-old, died Thursday at a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, from complications of old age, her son, Joshua Friedman, said.
“The excitement of the war bein’ over, plus I had a few drinks, so when I saw the nurse I grabbed her, and I kissed her”, Mendonsa told CBS News in 2012 when the network reunited Mendonsa and Friedman at the scene of “the Kiss” in Times Square.
A black and white print of a couple kissing in Times Square on VJ Day, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, is laid out from the vast collection of historic photographs stored in the Hulton Archive on May 13, 2011 in London, England.
The photograph has become one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century.
She was 92, and had been living in an assisted-living community, Joshua Friedman said. It was first published in Life, buried deep within the magazine’s pages.
Friedman and Mendonsa were invited to a 1980 re-enactment of the iconic picture, but they did not kiss again. Taken by photographer Alfred Eisentaedt, the picture captured the jubilance people felt upon the war’s end.
In a 2005 interview with the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, the Austrian-born Friedman said she later designed dolls’ clothes, worked in summer theatre and became a book restorer. She had been working at a dentist?s office on August 14, which was why she was wearing the white nurses outfit, she had said.
“My mom always had an appreciation for a feminist viewpoint, and understood the premise that you don’t have a right to be intimate with a stranger on the street”, he said, but added that she thought Mendonsa to be “a lovely person”.
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There were a number of people who claimed to be the sailor and the nurse in the photo and it was not until the 1980s that they were confirmed to be Ms Friedman and Mr Mendosa. “It wasnt a romantic event”.
