To the editor:
With Memorial Day recently on our minds, we note one Cranbury veteran who has long been overlooked. His name came to us through Carl Liedtke, a lifelong resident.
Marion Earl was known to his friends and family by the nickname "Duke," a name he shared with an uncle who was killed in World War I.
Duke Earl’s parents were missionaries who settled in Cranbury around the late 1930s. The family lived in a house at Westminster and Maplewood.
Duke was a "Cranbury Boy." For those unfamiliar with the term, the Cranbury Boys were band of brothers who came of age together.
They went to school together, played ball together and together moved up the ranks of the Boy Scouts.
They had their local hangouts that, in Duke Earl’s era, was Liedtke’s Garage on Main Street.
The Cranbury Boys were goodhearted and loyal. They were also true patriots and when their country called, they enlisted to defend it.
Like so many others in World War II his brother George and theChristiansen brothers among them Duke Earl enlisted in the Navy at the New Brunswick substation. An exceptionally bright young man, Duke Earl was sent toWashington D.C., where he underwent communications training. One day in 1944, while canoeing on the Schuylkill River on a day off, he saw some children in a boat heading for a dam. In the process of attempting a rescue, Duke Earl drowned.
Unlike his brother and friends, Duke Earl’s name does not appear on the WarMemorial in Cranbury. At the time of his enlistment, his father had died and his mother had moved to an apartment in New Brunswick, so he did not have a Cranbury address on his enlistment form. Nevertheless, we proudly claim him as one of our own.
To his family and friends we offer special praise and honor for veteran Marion "Duke" Earl.
Pari Stave
Mayor
Cranbury

