Artifacts to help tell story of USS Savannah

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July 18, 2012

Artifacts to help tell story of USS Savannah

By Chuck Mobley The Savannah Morning News The Dalton Daily Citizen Wed Jul 18, 2012, 01:30 PM EDT

SAVANNAH — Jane Moore returned to Savannah Tuesday to present the Ships of the Sea Museum with a treasured memento of her childhood that’s also a tangible connection to American naval history — the champagne bottle she shattered against the bow of the USS Savannah during the ship’s launching ceremonies in 1937.

Now 89, she was 14 and a student at the Pape School when she made the train trip to Camden, N.J., for the event. Her uncle, influential U.S. Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. of Georgia, had arranged her participation, said Moore.

She successfully smashed the bottle, still held together by a macrami and stored inside a small box, on her first swing.

“I know I could hit it right,” smiled Moore. “I’d been playing softball all spring.”

Glass “went flying everywhere” from the impact and a piece cut her on the arm, she added.

The occasion was made sweeter, Moore recalled with a smile, because many people wondered at the time why her elder sister, Peggy, hadn’t been chosen to christen the ship.

Peggy had recently unveiled a picture of their grandmother — the senator’s mother — at a Georgia college, an occasion that Russell thought was a “much bigger honor,” said Moore.

Moore also was a prominent participant in another chapter in the ship’s history — its 1939 visit to its namesake city.

She rode out to the Savannah in a launch before it entered the harbor, came up the ship’s side, and then sailed in with the crew.

“We steamed in together,” said Moore, her delight in the event scarcely diminished by the intervening 73 years.

Near the end of World War II, at a time when the USS Savannah was nearing the end of her active service, Moore married and moved to Abingdon, Va., where she still lives. Last year, she and her daughter, Jane Green of Durham, N.C., visited Savannah and during a conversation with friends Katharine Carlson and Millie Dimock learned about the Ships of the Sea Museum.

Executive Director Tony Pizzo is grateful for that confluence of events.

Besides the bottle, Moore also donated 10 black-and-white photographs of the commissioning ceremony and its participants, a large, framed color photograph of the ship under full steam and a crewman’s cap ribbon.

The items represent a “windfall” for Ships of the Sea, which has a large model of the Savannah and its bell on display, said Pizzo.

Wendy Melton, the museum’s curator of exhibits and education, said the collection will help tell the story of the USS Savannah, which was at several important battles in World War II and then sold for scrap in the 1960s, and tie it to an important Georgia family.

It’s a “great” addition to the museum, she said.

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Artifacts to help tell story of USS Savannah

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