Famed Evangelo's picture is worth a thousand wars of words

Nov. 6—The owner of Evangelo's Cocktail Lounge — a mainstay of Santa Fe nightlife for more than 50 years — is suing Leatherneck magazine, claiming the Marine Corps Association publication misidentified iconic photographs of the bar's founder and refuses to correct the error.

Nikolaos Klonis — whose father, Evangelo Klonis, a World War II veteran, started the establishment in 1970 — filed the complaint Oct. 27 in state District Court.

In the lawsuit, the younger Klonis says Geoffrey Roecker — the author of the story that accompanies the photos in question — misidentified the person in pictures of his father as a Marine by the name of T.E. Underwood and "doubles down on his false identification" by writing: "Notably, Underwood is sometimes thought to be Army Sergeant Angelo Klonis, although further research debunks this claim."

The striking black and white images — one of which graced the cover of a publication called LIFE — 50th Anniversary of World War II and another that was made into a commemorative "Master of American Photography" postage stamp — are said to be the work of lauded photojournalist W. Eugene Smith.

Enlarged versions of the images hang in the downtown bar.

One of the images, dubbed "Weary Soldier Commemorative Stamp," shows a young solider wearing a helmet and a rifle strapped to his back looking at the viewer over his shoulder with a look of determination, a filterless cigarette dangling from his lips.

In his July 2021 Leatherneck story titled "I Never Had Any Idea It Would Get Home," Roecker — also named a defendant in the complaint — identifies the soldier in the image as Thomas Ellis Underwood.

In the story, Roecker, an author and researcher from upstate New York best known for his work finding Marines who went missing in action in World War II, writes the image "symbolized the suffering and determination of a nation — a sentiment so universal that many families have seen their own relative staring out of the masterful photograph."

Another photo shows the unshaven, dark-hared solider drinking from a canteen.

According to Roecker's story, two photographers captured images of Underwood following intense fighting between U.S. and Japanese soldiers on the Pacific island of Saipan in July 1944. One was Smith; the other was Stanley Troutman, who worked for Acme Newspapers in Los Angeles and also became a noted war photographer.

Troutman's photograph was published in the St. Petersburg Times on July 24, 1944, according to the story, which says "George and Cora Underwood, thrilled to see their son alive and well, clipped out the photo" and mailed it to him.

Smith shot three frames of Underwood, Roecker wrote, including the one with the cigarette.

But according to the younger Klonis, Roecker got it wrong. The photos of the weary solider are not of Underwood, but his father, the bar's namesake, Evangelo "Angelo" Klonis, who died in 1989.

Evangelo Klonis did serve with a man named Underwood, according to the complaint, but his name was John Ray Underwood. The lawsuit says there may have been some confusion over the names; Evangelo Klonis told his son his service buddies called Evangelo "Crazy Greek," which translates to trelos ellinas, or "T.E. for short."

One of the exhibits attached to Klonis' complaint is a 2005 affidavit from a woman named Theresa Underwood, in which she says her husband told her he had served with a Greek man who saved his life by killing a Japanese soldier who was chasing him with a bayonet on Saipan.

They'd even traveled to New Mexico to search for him after the war but couldn't find him because her husband didn't know the man's name, according to the affidavit.

Theresa Underwood writes in the affidavit she had examined Smith's photographs of the solider drinking from a canteen, and they are not her husband.

Underwood would frequently change the initials of his first name because he didn't want to be known as "J.R." or "Junior," according to the affidavit.

Klonis' complaint also includes:

* A 2001 letter from the U.S. Postal Service informing Klonis that Smith would be one of those honored in its "Masters of American Photography" stamp series in 2002 and one of the images "is your father, Evangelo Klonis."

* A 2004 letter from Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona founder James Enyeart, who wrote he'd worked closely with Smith "every day for two years identifying and organizing his photographs and negatives," and was "unequivocally confident" the Smith photo that became a stamp depicted Klonis.

An attorney for the Klonis family sent Leatherneck's editor and publisher a letter Jan. 3, 2022, asking for a retraction or correction to Roecker's story. According to the lawsuit, the magazine sent a two-line response: "We ... will look into the issue [and] if we determine that we have misidentified the individual in question, we will correct it."

The Marine Corps Association, which publishes Leatherneck, brushed off another request for a correction in March 2022, according to Klonis' lawsuit. The monthly publication's cover bills the publication as the "Magazine of the Marines."

The complaint accuses the association of publishing the story "with reckless disregard for the truth without having taken reasonable steps to determine the identity of the individual portrayed in the photographs," before distributing it to thousands of readers.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the solider depicted in the iconic photographs is Evangelo Klonis and to award an unspecified amount of actual damages to compensate his family for "their humiliation, suffering and other injuries." It also asks for punitive damages and the cost of bringing the lawsuit.

The Marine Corps Association, a Virginia-based organization dedicated building awareness about the traditions of that branch of the U.S. military, did not respond to phone messages seeking comment. Roecker did not respond to an inquiry seeking comment submitted on his website Monday.