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On the day that World War II ended, Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt made one of the most famous pictures the magazine ever ran. The nurse being kissed by a passing sailor in New York's Times Square was Edith Shain. A retired L.A. Unified teacher, she has lived in Los Angeles now for a long time. Dennis McCarthy writes in the Daily News that she will ride as grand marshal in this year's Canoga Park Memorial Day Parade.
She was just finishing her shift at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan when the news came over the radio. The war was over."If you were a New Yorker, you knew exactly where you had to go to celebrate -- Times Square," Edith says. "I grabbed one of the other nurses, and we jumped on the subway downtown.
"We got off at Times Square, and had walked only a short distance when this sailor grabbed me, spun me around, and kissed me. I let him. I thought this guy had been fighting for our country. He deserved a big kiss."
She didn't tell her parents or friends about it for years, but Eisenstaedt later flew to Los Angeles and confirmed she was the nurse in the photograph. The image ran inside the first time it was published, but later appeared on several Life covers.