Edith Slain,nurse in victory kiss photograph,dies at 91

Edith Shain,who became something of a celebrity decades after World War II,asserting that she was the nurse kissed by a sailor in Life magazines memorable photograph of V-J Day in Times Square....

Edith Shain,who became something of a celebrity decades after World War II,asserting that she was the nurse kissed by a sailor in Life magazines memorable photograph of V-J Day in Times Square,died on Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 91. Her death was announced by her family.

On the 60th anniversary of Japans surrender,in 2005,the Times Square Alliance welcomed Shain to its commemoration of that frenzied August day in 1945,when strangers were hugging and kissing everywhere in the throngs that came to Times Square to celebrate the wars end. Wearing sneakers and a nurses uniform,Shain re-enacted the moment captured by Lifes renowned photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Many men have claimed to be the sailor who bestowed the kiss.

The happiness was indescribable, Shain said of the original V-J Day celebration. It was a very long kiss. She was in New York in 2008,as grand marshal for the citys Veterans Day Parade.

When Eisenstaedt took his photograph,he did not get the names of the embracing sailor and the nurse,and their faces were largely obscured.

A Navy photographer,Lt Victor Jorgensen,also photographed the pair,but he,too,did not obtain their identities.

Thirty-five years later,Shain,who was teaching in LA after having been a nurse at Doctors Hospital in New York during the war,wrote to Eisenstaedt,saying now that Im 60 its fun to admit that Im the nurse in your famous shot. (She was 27 when it was taken).

Eisenstaedt visited Shain,and Life reproduced her letter to him in its August 1980 issue,along with pictures he took of her with her family and her students. Shain said she had recognised herself in the photo but had kept silent all those years. I didnt think it was dignified,but times have changed, she told Life.

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Two months later,Life published photos of 10 men who had come forward to say they were the sailor in that photo,and a picture of yet another man,no longer alive,whose family had put in a claim. It also ran pictures of two other women who said they were the nurse.

We received claims from a few nurses and dozens of sailors but we could never prove that any of them were the actual people,and Eisenstaedt himself just said he didnt know, Bobbi Baker Burrows,an editor at Life,said in 2008.

In 2008,Shain spoke of what the V-J Day photo meant to her. It says so many things, she said. Hope,love,peace and tomorrow.