Different News

Glenn McDuffie holds a portrait of himself as a young man, left, and a copy of Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic 1945 Life magazine shot of a sailor embracing a nurse in a white uniform, right, at his Houston home Tuesday. McDuffie says he is the sailor in the famous photograph and that claim is now backed up by the Houston Police Department's forensic artist.

Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson took up the challenge. And after what she called a detailed investigation, Gibson said she has concluded that McDuffie, 80, is the man in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Aug. 14, 1945, image.

The 2005 Guinness Book of World Records said Gibson has helped police identify more suspects than any other forensic artist. For this investigation, she had McDuffie pose for new photographs in his sailor uniform, recreating the famous pose with a pillow instead of a nurse. She measured his ears, facial bones, hairline, wrist, knuckles and hand and compared those to enlargements of Eisenstaedt’s picture.

“I could tell just in general that yes, it’s him,” said Gibson, a 25-year department veteran. “But I wanted to be able to tell other people so I replicated the pose.”

But Life magazine isn’t convinced the Houston man is the sailor in the photograph, which is the magazine’s most reproduced image.

Because Eisenstaedt, who died in 1995, didn’t identify the subjects of the photo, Life Books editorial director Robert Sullivan said the identities will officially remain a mystery.

Other men have purported to be the sailor in the picture, including a retired New York police detective and a Rhode Island fisherman. Several women have claimed to be the nurse.

Gibson also compared some of the other men to Eisenstaedt’s photo.

“All other people who have come forward I have eliminated based on their facial bones,” she said. “To me that’s definitive. Everything is consistent. I’m as positive as you can be.”

‘We never spoke a word’
McDuffie, now battling lung cancer, has had three wives and three children. He’s played semi-professional baseball and worked in construction and for the U.S. Postal Service. Before he dies, the North Carolina native wants the world to know he was the sailor in the famous photograph.

He said he’s relieved that Gibson’s analysis supports what remains a vivid memory.

He said he was changing trains in New York when he was told that Japan had surrendered and World War II was over.

“I was so happy. I ran out in the street,” said McDuffie, then 18 and on his way to visit his girlfriend in Brooklyn.

“And then I saw that nurse,” he said. “She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face ... I just went right to her and kissed her.”

---