Christopher L. Reilly, 72

Christopher Reilly- Naval Officer/ Airline Captain longtime Gig Harbor resident passes

Probably best remembered for two US Coast Guard boats he restored and operated for years in the harbor. Chris graduated from Seattle Preparatory in 1971, then an all boys Jesuit School, and spent the next ten years putting himself through Washington State University and getting his flying licenses through CFI. He went from Pullman, WA
to Pensacola, Florida and entered the Naval Officer Candidate program.

He was Commissioned in 1982 and completed flight training in Beeville, TX. Chris served two combat deployments, the first aboard the USS Independence CV-62 off Iran and Iraq in 1983-1984. The second was aboard the USS Forrestal CV-59, in the Mediterranean off Libya as a carrier jet pilot. He spent the next two years as an Advanced Strike instructor and Wing LSO in Beeville, Texas.

Leaving active duty in 1988 to start a family, he was hired at American Airlines 2 months later and flew the next 25 years both domestically and internationally; retiring in 2018. He lived in a small house on Crescent Lake without a television and distracted himself reading books. He read Russian authors, Irish poets, and Japanese Haiku. He was fascinated with cold fusion and quantum mechanics, but admitted to understanding very little of it. He read newspapers front to back. Drank his coffee at Austin Chase; now Cutter’s Point. When he drank beer, it was at Tides, when it was still mostly locals, and ate his meals at Shoreline.

Chris attended mass at St. Nicholas Catholic Church for the entire time he was in the Harbor. He was in the Madrona Men’s Club, summited Mt. Rainier at 53 with George Dunn and Ang Dorjie. He camped and fly fished on his vacations in the remote backcountry of Idaho and was a “leave no trace behind” proponent.

He flew his Cessna float plane to remote lakes in British Columbia and, on occasion, into Tides for clam chowder.

While in the Navy, he contracted a little known malabsorption disorder called Tropical Sprue, which medicine was unable to diagnose for several years. The effects of this chronic disease became too much for his system to hold off and he passed away on April 22, 2025. He had retired to the Idaho panhandle on a small private airport to fly his Cessna 180 into back country aristrips to fly fish.

He asks forgiveness of anyone he may have ever offended. His funeral Mass will be at St Thomas the Apostle in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho May 1, 2025 at 11:00 AM.

He is survived by five siblings; Mike (Penny), Corona, New Mexico, Pamela Sturgill (Brent), Eagle, Idaho, Jon (Lorri) and Colleen, Tucson, Arizona and Pat (Lisa) Prosper, Texas. He will be buried in Saint Maries, Idaho with his ancestors near his mother and father, and grandfather and the St. Joe river; a stream he fished all his life,

“So we commend unto Almighty God the soul of our ship mate departed and commit his body unto the deep, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, when the sea shall give up her dead unto eternal life, at the trump of the angel and the coming of the Christ, even Jesus who is Savior and Lord.”