Navy legend lost two husbands in airship crashes before leading WAVES

Navy Lt. Joy Bright Hancock recalled the mix of sorrow and pride she felt at the 1943 ceremony to christen the destroyer named for Navy Lt. Cmdr. Lewis Hancock, who was the second husband she had lost in a crash aboard a Navy rigid airship. Her husband, the executive officer of the 680-foot Navy dirigible Shenandoah, was among the 14 killed when the rigid airship was caught in a violent storm and crashed on Sept. 3, 1925, near Caldwell, Ohio. The pair had been married little more than a year. She tightened her grip on the traditional bottle of champagne used to christen a destroyer and picked out a smudge on the hull that would be her target. As she swung hard to break the bottle, she uttered, “I christen thee Lewis Hancock,” before turning to salute as the Fletcher-class destroyer slipped down the ways at the Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Kearny, New Jersey, on Aug. 1, 1943.

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