Wyoming crash claims members of gospel family The Nelons
A private plane crash in rural Wyoming on July 26, 2024, killed seven people, including three members of the award-winning Southern gospel group The Nelons, as they traveled to perform on the Gaither Homecoming Cruise to Alaska.
The Pilatus PC-12 went down in the early afternoon north of Gillette, near Recluse, after departing Nebraska. There were no survivors. Those killed were Kelly Nelon Clark and her husband, Jason Clark; their daughter Amber Nelon Kistler and her husband, Nathan Kistler; family assistant Melodi Hodges; and pilot Larry Haynie and his wife, Melissa Haynie. Haynie, a former law-enforcement official, also chaired the Georgia Board of Corrections.
The fourth member of The Nelons, Autumn Nelon Streetman—Kelly and Jason’s younger daughter—was not on the flight. She and her husband, Jamie, had taken a commercial flight and were already in Seattle when they learned of the crash. In a statement released through Gaither Management Group, she thanked supporters for prayers for herself, Jamie, their then-unborn son, and Jason’s parents, Dan and Linda Clark. She later described the grief as indescribable.
The family was en route to Seattle to join a gospel-music cruise featuring many of Christian music’s best-known artists. The Nelons, founded in 1977 by Kelly’s father, Rex Nelon, as an offshoot of The LeFevres, had built a decades-long ministry of hymns and original songs. The group earned multiple Dove Awards, three Grammy nominations, and induction into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 2016.
Early accounts pointed to an autopilot problem. The National Transportation Safety Board later determined that the aircraft encountered an updraft from convective weather, the autopilot disconnected, and the pilot became distracted and lost control in instrument conditions.
Fellow artists, including Bill and Gloria Gaither, gathered with Autumn and Jamie in Seattle to pray and offer support. Autumn later said she would continue the family’s musical work, releasing and promoting songs of hope recorded before the crash. A joint funeral for the Clark and Kistler family members was held in Georgia the following month.
The loss ended one of Southern gospel’s most familiar family lineups and left Autumn as the sole surviving performing member of the immediate circle that had defined The Nelons for a generation.
