McClatchy Washington Bureau

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BRADENTON, Fla. — It was the morning of Aug. 15, 1945, and Tom Bozza's phone wouldn't stop ringing.

"You're famous!" callers told him.

A confused Bozza didn’t know what they were talking about, but unbeknownst to him the sailor was in a photograph splashed across the front page of the New York Daily News and republished in papers across the country.

Aptly titled “The Kiss,” the classic Alfred Eisenstaedt photo captures a sailor kissing a nurse in the middle of New York City’s Times Square the day World War II ended — Aug. 14, 1945.

And Bozza, now 88 and living in Bradenton, is immortalized in the background.

Dressed in a white uniform and wearing a black tie, he is captured walking behind the random pairing of two presumed strangers, apparently caught up in the moment.

“I was nobody. Just happened to be on the scene,” said Bozza.

Read the complete story at bradenton.com