Wilbur E. Colyer was born on March 5, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in the United States Army during World War I as a Sergeant in Company A, 1st Engineers, 1st Division. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery near Verdun, France, on October 9, 1918. His citation reads "Volunteering with 2 other soldiers to locate machine gun nests, Sgt. Colyer advanced on the hostile positions to a point where he was half surrounded by the nests, which were in ambush. He killed the gunner of one gun with a captured German grenade and then turned this gun on the other nests silencing all of them before he returned to his platoon. He was later killed in action." His Medal was posthumously awarded to him in 1919. He is now buried in Cypress Hills National Cemetery, Brooklyn, Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, USA.