Some days I get the best jobs.
A few days ago I got to meet Gloria "Glow" Bullard. The New York Times had sent me to her home in Winnsboro, SC because she happened to be in a kinda famous photo of a kiss in Times Square when the war ended.
Nope, it's not the photo that your thinking of, but it's the same kiss. This photo was taken by a Navy photographer named Victor Jorgensen and it's similar to the famous one--just shot from the side.
What's cool about the photo is that way in the background, underneath the W in the Walgreens sign you can see a little face. A smiling totally beeming face. That face belongs to Mrs. Bullard.
She was headed home from nursing school, still in her nursing uniform when she stopped to watch what was going on in Times Square.
If you get a chance to meet Mrs. Bullard, she will tell you as she did me that she thinks she is about as interesting as a "bedpost" but really she has some of the best stories to tell. She talks about that day and all the bells ringing and the noise and everyone in the street. She, like the nurse in the photo, was grabbed and kissed by tons of boys in uniform--"we had these half sleeves on our uniforms with little cufflinks. Ours sleeves were so torn from all the kissing!!!". She remembers it all like it was yesterday.
If you'd like the read the whole story, check out http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/from-photos-periphery-an-eyewitness-to-a-timeless-kiss
Another favorite she told me that day was going to a concert with her mom to see Frank Sinatra. "He was just beautiful,"she said, "all the girls were screaming. But I wasn't feeling too well." Her mom told her that if she got sick to go right ahead and throw up in her hat--they weren't leaving! She didn't get sick, but after the concert her mom took her to the doctors. Turned out she had to have her appendix out!!! She has dozens more stories, I just know it. Can't wait to hear more.
Here are a few pictures, that's Mrs. Bullard with her nursing cap she had framed and a picture of her when she graduated from nursing school next to Victor Jorgensen's photo--look closely and you can see her way in the background.
