A memorial ceremony was held Sunday in honor of an Irish-American pilot who was killed in a freak accident nearly a century ago.

The ceremony was at the Veterans Section of Mountain View Cemetery in Northwest Reno.

It included a local bagpipe player, a few of the pilot’s decedents and members of the Sons & Daughters of Erin .

For nearly a decade, the local Irish heritage organization has engaged in the annual tradition of spreading shamrocks at the grave of Major William F. "Big Bill" Blanchfield. The Royal Air Service WW1 veteran was killed in a freak accident in 1924. The tradition was started by Blanchfield’s mother and other relatives who would send shamrocks to Reno undertaker Silas Ross until his death in 1975.

That tradition continued sporadically by a few Reno historians until 2012 when the Reno-based Irish heritage organization resumed the tradition.

Blanchfield, flew reconnaissance missions for the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War I, shot down three German aircraft and attained the rank of Major by the war's end.

He immigrated to the America in 1920, where he immediately applied for citizenship, and a year later joined the fledgling US Government Postal Service as a pilot flying the Reno to Elko leg in the first day-to-night transcontinental airmail delivery. These pioneer aviators were regarded at that time as the “Pony Express of the Skies.”

Despite braving aerial combat in the Great War, flights in sub-zero temperatures, blizzards in the Sierras, fiery crash landings, and other near-fatal adventures, Blanchfield ironically lost his life while performing an aerial tribute at the funeral of a comrade.   He was only 29 years old when he died.

The tragedy, which was attributed to a freak wind, stunned the flying community and the public, and the popular Blanchfield was widely mourned. Reno ’s first airport, which was located between Plumas and Skyline what is now the Washoe County Golf Course, was named “Blanch Field” after the aviator. 

“We are proud to carry on this tradition and help people to remember a part of Reno ’s history that celebrates a great Irish-American,” said William Puchert, President of the Sons & Daughters of Erin .