George Mendonsa holds a copy of the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day, 1945.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

The booze was flowing and, all around him in Times Square, people were whooping it up in a spontaneous celebration of the war’s end. So when the sailor in his Navy blues saw the nurse in her white uniform, he embraced her, dipped her slightly and then firmly pressed his lips to hers.

The euphoric moment, caught in the viewfinder of a Life magazine photographer, went on to become one of the most enduring images of America’s victory in World War II.

It also planted the seeds of a mystery.

The smoochers, with their faces hidden in the photo, were never identified and George Mendonsa, a retired Middletown fishermen, has spent a lifetime trying to prove he’s the sailor in the kiss seen around the world. Now 86, he’ll finally get some affirmation this weekend when he’ll have the honor of riding on a float in Bristol’s Fourth of July parade while seated beside the Maryland woman who was the recipient of his uninhibited elation when Japan surrendered on Aug. 14, 1945.

When employees at Raytheon’s Portsmouth plant first came up with the idea of a patriotic float centered around “the kiss,” they had no idea that one town away lived a man who has gone to extraordinary lengths collecting evidence to persuade Life to acknowledge he’s the sailor in the photo. But the volunteers quickly learned of Mendonsa by word of mouth and called him to ask whether he would climb aboard the float for the parade.

“Well, sure,” Mendonsa answered.

He had long been in touch with the Frederick, Md., woman he says he embraced that jubilant day 63 years ago, so when the Raytheon volunteers said they wanted her on the float too, Mendonsa offered to call her. Greta Zimmer Friedman said yes and now the two will be reunited for the first time since an interview nearly 20 years ago.

Mendonsa says his wife, Rita, will be OK with that.

“She heard this a million times,” he says.

After all, she’s had to deal with it ever since the moment George, her then-boyfriend, strayed from her side in Times Square and planted one on the lips of that woman.

AS THE STORY GOES, George and Rita were taking in a Rockettes performance at Radio City Music Hall when someone interrupted the show and announced that Japan had surrendered. The crowd spilled out into the streets and Mendonsa and his gal wound up in a bar.

After knocking down some beers and stepping outside, the petty officer first class, who had volunteered to serve in the Navy despite a fishing deferment and had been treated by a nurse on a hospital ship in the Pacific, saw the woman in white. With Rita looking on and photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt snapping away, Mendonsa says he pulled the woman toward him and kissed her. “It was the excitement of the war ending,” he says, “and I think I drank a little too much.”

On a visit to Raytheon late last month, Mendonsa chatted as volunteers used a forklift to hoist a rented bronze statue of the Times Square kiss — a life-size replica of a 25-foot one that travels around the country — and lowered it onto the front of the float. Mendonsa, wearing a sailor’s cap, and Friedman, with a nurse’s hat, will be seated behind it.

The theme of the float is “serving those who serve” and the setting will be World War II, says Manny Ribeiro, a shipping manager who is coordinating Raytheon’s annual entry in the Bristol parade. Someone will dress as Rosie the Riveter, the character created during the war to recognize and inspire the women who went to work in America’s factories. And three women will portray the Andrews Sisters, dancing and lip-synching on the bandstand to their hit tune “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

Mendonsa, largely oblivious of the commotion around him as the statue was moved into place, has a full head of white hair, wide clear eyes, a long and virtually wrinkle-free face and a fisherman’s hands so large and powerful you feel like a little kid when shaking hands with him. His mind is sharp, his memories intact, his jokes wry. For anyone willing to listen, he’s thrilled to present all of the evidence he has gathered over the years to prove he’s the famous sailor.

“We went to his house and he showed us the evidence, what we think is evidence,” says Ribeiro. “We are so excited to reunite George and Greta and at this wonderful, patriotic parade.”

NEARLY A dozen men and women have claimed to be the anonymous sailor and nurse since Life reprinted the photograph in 1980, the 35th anniversary of the event, and asked the sailor to step forward. But the magazine, while rebuffing some of the claims over the years, has never singled anyone out as the genuine kissing sailor, nor did Eisenstaedt, who died shortly before the republication of the photo 30 years ago.

Mendonsa opens a neat three-ring binder and, when making a point, removes a photograph or document to back up his case. But he’s not content to just explain. He wants affirmation.

“Is that her or not her?” he asks.

He gestures to a high school graduation picture of his wife and then to the face of a woman behind him in another in the series of Eisenstaedt photos from Times Square (which he won in 1987 after suing Life).

He turns to a report from Richard Benson, a photography professor at Yale, whom he hired in 1987. Benson concluded it was Mendonsa in the photo, citing as evidence his remarkably large hands and an unusual bump, known as a wen, that he could see in the photo and which remains on Mendonsa’s right wrist today.

In 2004, after dropping his $150,000 lawsuit against Life, Mendonsa went high-tech in pursuit of the fame he says he deserves. A neighbor of his who works at the Naval War College led a team of volunteers in using 3-D face scanning technology — normally used to “age” missing children and fugitive criminals —to “de-age” Mendonsa. The results of the scanning, conducted using 16 cameras and 16 computers, was an image of what Mendonsa theoretically looked like in his early 20s — from the same angle the original photograph was taken. It was a match, the team concluded.

But Life remained mum on the matter. Since then, Mendonsa hasn’t made any significant progress in his investigation. A local man, Lawrence Verria of Bristol, has completed a manuscript about the photograph that he is trying to get published and which concludes the sailor is Mendonsa.

And now, on Saturday, tens of thousands of spectators lining Rhode Island’s largest and most famous Independence Day parade, will see the float — the statue, Mendonsa and Friedman, and a banner reading “George and Greta together again” with a picture of the kiss. The cheers and applause may well serve as the kind of recognition that has eluded him for so long.If you go

•The Bristol Fourth of July Parade starts at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the corner of Hope Street (Route 114) and Chestnut Street. The procession will head south through downtown Bristol until the intersection of High Street, where it will turn back toward town, ending at the Town Common at State Street. For more information, go to www.july4thbristolri.com

For a complete list of other Fourth of July events throughout the region,

go to Page A4 and projo.com.

rsalit@projo.com