Joy Bright Hancock had been married to Navy man Lewis Hancock, Jr., a submarine officer during World War I. During the early 1920s he served on various battleships, and in 1922 he was assigned to be executive officer of a Navy dirigible, the Shenandoah. The Shenendoah crashed in Caldwell, Ohio in 1925.
In this photo, Hancock is christening a ship named after her late husband. The ship set sail in August 1943.
The photograph comes from the U.S. National Archives.
Hinges of History 