BUSS DRIVER?
You've seen the photo. You've seen the sculpture.
Now meet the Kissing Sailor in the famed photo that inspired the "Unconditional Surrender" statue.
Well, maybe.
On Saturday, 64 years after Japan's surrender drew World War II to a close, Navy veteran Carl "Moose" Muscarello will participate in V-J Day ceremonies at the base of Seward Johnson's 25-foot tall statue on the Sarasota bayfront.
Escorted from the Hyatt Regency by a Vietnam Brotherhood motorcyle contingent, and whisked to the site courtesy of Sarasota Classic Car Museum in a 1936 Lincoln K limo once commanded by presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, Muscarello will join local dignitaries such as Rep. Vern Buchanan for an observance that begins at 11:30 a.m.
Then, unfazed by other Navy veterans laying claim to the title of the Kissing Sailor, he'll hang around to autograph "Unconditional Surrender" posters free of charge.
"Hey, I respect every one of those guys who thinks it was them," says the 82-year-old who most recently made headlines for foiling a burglary at his home in Plantation. "But I tell it like it is."
For Muscarello, the milestone known as V-J Day -- Aug. 14, 1945 -- would begin in euphoria and conclude in sorrow. And somewhere in the middle, the young man he claims to have been was immortalized simply for getting caught on camera by Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.
The photo became an instant classic, and Time magazine labeled it as one of the 10 greatest moments in photojournalism.
In 1980, Edith Shain of Los Angeles stepped forward to proclaim herself the nurse in the photo, which Eisenstaedt confirmed. But the identity of the Kissing Sailor remained a mystery, and at least 10 Navy veterans subsequently laid claim to that distinction.
But none of those contenders made the splash that Muscarello did in 1995. That's when the native New Yorker broke 50 years of silence about what happened that day, which was enough to tentatively convince Shain that he was the one.
Here is Muscarello's story:
On V-J Day, the 18-year-old submarine tender was stationed at Staten Island when the surrender news broke and 72-hour shore leaves were granted. Muscarello invited a buddy to visit his mother in Brooklyn, but they made numerous beer stops along the way. By the time he lurched into the bedlam of Times Square, he says he was kissing every woman in sight, unaware he was being tracked in Eisenstaedt's Leica viewfinder.
But the celebration ended abruptly when he got home. His mother informed him that six of his childhood buddies had been killed in the war. "It's 60 years later," he says, "and I still can't get over it."
Two weeks later, his mother was at a doctor's office and saw the Kissing Sailor on the Aug. 27 cover of Life. The face was obscured, but he says she recognized a birthmark on his right hand.
"She said: 'Don't you know you shouldn't kiss strange women? You'll get a disease.' I said, 'The lady's a nurse,' and she said, 'That's the worst kind, they're always around sick people.'"
Muscarello went on to join the New York Police Department, and quietly retired in Florida. But as the 50th anniversary of V-J Day approached in 1995, the son of a friend familiar with the story told Muscarello he could make lots of money as the Kissing Sailor. Muscarello replied, "It would be obscene to make money off World War II."
Nevertheless, the friend wanted to resolve the issue. Next thing Muscarello knew, he was on the phone with Edith Shain.
"We had a long dialogue," he says. "She asked me a lot of questions. 'Where did we go to dinner that night?' I said we never went to dinner. She said 'How come you never called after I gave you my phone number?' I said you never gave me your phone number. Questions like that. And she said, 'You're right! That's exactly how it happened!'"
No romantic drama emerged. Muscarello had remarried after the death of his first wife. Shain had been married three times.
Still, the two agreed to return to Times Square in 1995, where they re-enacted Eisenstaedt's photo for the media. They did it again in 2005. But the reunion failed to cool the controversy.
As recently as last summer, after having convinced a local forensics investigator of his bona fides, Glenn McDuffie of Houston was lauded at a Houston Astros game as the Kissing Sailor.
And in 2005, staking his own claim to Kissing Sailor immortality, Newport, R.I., resident George Mondonsa unsuccessfully sued Time/Life for using his image in 1945 without his consent.
Shain, 89, did not reply to the Herald-Tribune's request for an interview. She made her last statement on Muscarello's Kissing Sailor status to The New York Times in 2005: "I can't say he isn't. I just can't say he is. There is no way to tell."
His mind apparently is as agile as it was when he served as an NYPD detective and as a fraud investigator with American Express, Muscarello can rebut his competitors' claims in convincing fashion. And skeptics aiming to take it out back with "Moose" might want to reconsider.
He was written up in The Miami Herald and Golf Digest for wrestling a teenage burglar into a less iconic unconditional surrender pose in 2006. After jumping onto the young assailant's back and crashing through a bay window, Muscarello pinned one of the two intruders -- the other fled -- in a chokehold until police arrived.
"Well, this punk was whacking at my stepson with a golf club and the other guy was stabbing my wife with a screwdriver," says Muscarello, whose Saturday visit is being sponsored by the Sarasota County Veterans Commission. "My service revolver was hidden in a safe place and I didn't think I had enough time to get it.
"What are you gonna do?"
Time: 11:30 a.m. Saturday, no charge. Place: Bayfront Park at “Unconditional Surrender” sculpture, Sarasota. What: Music by Sarasota Military Academy. Formal ceremonies begin at noon with presentations by Rep. Vern Buchanan, Florida Sen. Mike Bennett, Vice Mayor Kelly Kirschner, Navy veteran Carl Muscarello who could be the man in the original famous kiss photo.