DD-727 Christening Bottle

Original DeHaven DD-727 Christening Bottle

by Jim Riggen

In June of this year I received an email from Mrs. Peggy K. Janney saying the she had the christening bottle from the launch of the DD-727 She asked if she had found the right person to contact. I responded that yes, I was the right person but in the back of my mind I wondered what kind of scam this was.

In that ensuing emails, she informed me that her late husband, Walter C. Janney III, had purchased the bottle at an auction on the Main Line of Philadelphia, the area where Miss DeHaven lived. The bottle has been in their display cabinet for the past 18 years. After the death of her husband, she and her son started looking for a good home for the bottle.

She then said that she had shipped it to me and that I could expect it the following Friday.

I waited until Friday and low and behold, there it was. It was well packed and it took me some time to get to the actual bottle. When I got to the bottle, I could see that it was in a wooden box but the wooden box had no lid. I figured I could make a lid for it. I felt the absence of a lid would not detract from the excitement of holding in my own hands the bottle used for christening the USS DeHaven (DD-727) over 61 years earlier! I was very happy that this was not a scam but just someone wanting to do the right thing.

I later discovered, as I was getting rid of all of the packing materials, that the lid was included, she had just wrapped it separately! That was really neat because it meant that we could have a completely original artifact of the DD-727.

After receiving the bottle, my wife Judie and I did some brainstorming to figure what we could do for Peggy to repay her for her efforts. We felt that money was not appropriate as it would lessen the true value of the gift. What we decided was that we would send Peggy a Certificate of Appreciation along with a gift. The gift would be a 'wall hanging' quilt that Judie would make. Judie quickly went to work on the quilt and I made the certificate.

Lable from Christening Bottle About two weeks later, we shipped the certificate and quilt to Peggy. I'm not sure who was more elated on receipt of their package, Peggy or me. She wrote back a very nice email thanking us for the certificate and quilt.

At the banquet during this year's reunion, I officially presented the bottle to our historian, Scott Martin.