Community Corner

Centennial High School Graduate Killed in Jet Crash

Lt. j.g. Valerie Cappelaere Delaney was a 2009 graduate of the Naval Academy.

A 26-year-old Centennial High School graduate was killed Monday when the plane she was flying crashed in Washington State, the Baltimore Sun reports. 

Lt. j.g. Valerie Cappelaere Delaney was also a Naval Academy Pilot who had joined the military after conversations with her grandfather, an Air Force Pilot, according to the Sun.

A lacrosse and soccer student with good grades, Cappelaere Delaney was not accepted into the Naval Academy the first time she applied, according to the Sun, but after taking a year to study at a private preparatory school, she was admitted.

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She studied engineering at the academy and graduated in 2009.

“Anything Valerie did she put her whole self into,” her mother, Ellicott City resident Doreen Cappalaere, told the Sun.

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Serving with the Electronic Attack Squadron VAQ-129, Cappalaere Delaney trained at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State. The plane crashed Monday in a wheat field 20 miles southwest of Davenport, according to the Spokesman-Review

“… The whole house just shook,” nearby resident Karen Carlson told the Spokesman-Review, “I told the guy (on the phone), ‘Oh, it’s an earthquake.’”

Also killed in the crash were flight officers Lt. j.g. William Brown McIlvaine III, 24, of El Paso, Texas, and Lt. Cmdr. Alan A. Patterson, 34, of Tullahoma, Tenn.

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