06/07/2026
85 years ago today: 7 June 1941
"The double christening of the Battleship South Dakota (BB-57)"
The newly-built battleship was set to be launched on June 7, 1941 at a shipyard at Camden, New Jersey. It was a big, expensive, state-of-the-art warship - fast, strong, and exceptionally powerful. Important ships get big ceremonies and plans for the event were made and well-publicized well ahead of time. South Dakota and South Dakotans were selected for high-profile duties at the event, and no one had a more prominent role than First Lady Vera Bushfield, the wife of then-governor Harlan Bushfield. She would be the ship's sponsor, which, among other things, meant that she would be the one to smash the ceremonial bottle of champagne across the ship's bow just as it was being launched into the harbor.
Mrs. Genevieve Trask, a resident of Pierre, South Dakota and a friend of the Bushfield's, had asked if a bottle of champagne that she'd been saving for a special occasion might be used for the christening. It sounds simple enough, but permission had to be obtained from the highest levels of the U.S. Navy and the New York Ship Building Company.
Mrs. Trask's seemingly simple request had to be channeled through the South Dakota Governor's office, through South Dakota's Congressional delegation and finally into the hands of those actually running the christening event. In the end, the answer was "yes, but." The bottle of champagne originally selected for the event would have to be smashed as well. If Mrs. Bushfield, as the sponsor, wanted a second bottle smashed, that would be up to her.
On the day of the event, a Saturday, hundreds of people waited for the tide to raise the the Delaware River at the shipyard. They waited longer as shipyard workers struggled to free the ship from its ways - the structure that held the ship upright during construction. The Sioux Falls Washington Senior High School Band Played. There were speeches and there was more waiting. A radio announcer kept talking, filling time while Philadelphia station WCAU recorded the entire event. No less than 45 minutes after the scheduled time, the ship was ready to be launched. Mrs. Bushfield swung a bottle of champagne like a baseball bat - like Joe DiMaggio, it was said. The bottle shattered and the crowd cheered. Almost almost simultaneously, Harry Heins, an employee of the ship building company, smashed the "official" bottle against the port side of the ship. The second strike can be heard in the WCAU recording, just barely, over the cheering crowd and the Washington High School Band.
When Miss Genevieve Babel was engaged to Mr. Howard Trask in 1912, the groom-to-be presented his fiance' with a bottle of Cook's Imperial American Champagne, vintage 1906. For reasons known only to the Trasks, the bottle was never opened. Instead, it was stored and cared for with the notion that someday, it could be used for something special. When a new Pierre to Fort Pierre bridge was to be dedicated in 1926, Mrs. Trask offered her bottle of champagne for the dedication, then Governor Carl Gunderson turned her down. With the country in the midst of Prohibition, Gunderson felt that it just wouldn't be right.
What's also remarkable about Mrs. Trask's story and that of the double-christening of the U.S.S. South Dakota is that it is very well-documented. Mrs. Trask kept a scrapbook with photos and other mementos of not just the christening day, but of many days before and afterward. There's a program from the christening, there's an ad for Cook's Imperial American Champagne. (The company paid for Mrs. Trask to attend the event in Camden.) There are diaries and correspondences. All of it now in the South Dakota State Archives at the State Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre.
The recording of the event is also in the State Archives. It's the same acetate disc that was delivered from WCAU in Philadelphia to radio station WNAX in South Dakota in early June, 1941. WNAX broadcast the recording statewide just a couple of days after the event.
The battleship South Dakota went on to distinguished service during World War II in both the Pacific and Atlantic. The ship and her crew saw action in almost every major naval engagement in the Pacific. She was the first ship to fire on the mainland of Japan and was anchored in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese finally surrendered in 1945.
The Battleship South Dakota Memorial in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, offers displays about the ship's history and photos of the various captains and crew members. Artifacts taken from the remains of the ship are also on display, including a portion of the original radar antenna, ships mast, sections of the original gun barrels, a full 16-inch gun barrel, and much more. The memorial is open 7 days a week, 9:30am-5:30pm.
Story credit: SDPB.
