San Marcos Memorial Set for Devyn Reiley, Pilot Who Died in Wisconsin Crash
Aug. 2—A Saturday memorial service is planned for Hill Country pilot Devyn Reiley, who died when the World War II-era airplane she was flying crashed into Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin on Saturday.
Reiley's service will be held at the Commemorative Air Force Hangar at 1841 Airport Drive in San Marcos on Saturday at 10 a.m.
Another service will be held in Harlingen — a city in the Rio Grande Valley about 20 miles from Brownsville — the following Saturday, according to her husband Hunter Reiley's Facebook page.
A Facebook page "Live like Devyn-Memorial Scholarship" said it intends to set up a memorial "scholarship/nonprofit" fund to share "awesome impact and legacy on the aviation community for years to come."
Reiley, who co-owned a New Braunfels-based flight school with her husband Hunter, was in Wisconsin for the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual fly-in convention in nearby Oshkosh.
Flight data shows the airplane took off from Wittman Regional Airport just before 9:00 a.m. It flew north of downtown Oshkosh and over Lake Winnebago, reaching an altitude of 3,900 feet, before crashing into the lake five minutes after takeoff. The two-seater plane was manufactured in 1944, the Oshkosh Northwestern reported.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
Devyn Reiley, 30, was raised in Wimberley and was the oldest of 13 siblings.
Reiley long dreamed of becoming a pilot like her father Bruce Collie, who earned two Super Bowl rings with the San Francisco 49ers and was inducted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.
She became a certified private pilot in 2017 and was working toward becoming a certified commercial pilot, according to a Facebook post from Texas Warbird Museum, a nonprofit she co-founded with her husband and his family to preserve retired WWII-era military aircraft known as warbirds and to share aviation stories from the Rio Grande Valley.
Additional reporting from Express-News staff writer Molly Smith.
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