Ralph C. Alburger

MAJOR RALPH COLEMAN ALBURGER was born in 1888 in Pennsylvania to Abraham C. and Lena S. Alburger. Besides Ralph, there was a brother, Eugene and a sister, Helen. The Alburgers had moved to Camden County by 1913, when Eugene passed away at age 13. The family purchased a cemetery plot at Arlington Cemetery at Cove Road and Westfield Avenue.

Ralph Alburger entered the United States Marine Corps on April 17, 1917. On August 20, 1918 he was transferred to the Marine Corps Officers Training Camp at Quantico, Virginia, where he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in December of 1918. In October of 1919, postwar reductions in the military saw him reduced to Quartermaster Sergeant, and given an extended furlough. He was living with his widowed mother Lena Alburger at 209 South Cove Road in Merchantville NJ and working as a clerk in 1920, supporting his mother, grandmother, sister Helen, and a nephew. Still on furlough through February of 1920, he was recalled to duty by April and stationed in Washington, DC.

Ralph Alburger he was restored to officer's rank in April of 1921. He was promoted to First Lieutenant in November of 1923, to Captain in November of 1933, and to Major in October of 1942.

Prior to America's entry into World War II, Ralph Alburger served overseas in Haiti, Nicaragua, China, the Philippines, and the Virgin Islands, primarily in an administrative capacity as a quartermaster. Later in his career he served in disbursements, mail, and in wartime, in censoring outgoing mail from the war zone to prevent intelligence leakage. He went overseas with the First Base Depot, initially to Wellington, New Zealand, then to Noumea, New Caledonia in the South Pacific, where he was serving in April of 1944. In July of 1944 he took ill and was sent back to the Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. He was transferred to St. Albans, New York not long afterwards, and in November of 1944 to the Naval Hospital at Bethesda,  Maryland where he passed away on March 9, 1945.

Major Alburger was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington VA. His parents, brother, and sister are buried together at Arlington Cemetery in Pennsauken NJ.

Ralph Alburger married Betty Reed in 1925, but the two separated in 1934. The separation was not amicable, and when his mother passed in 1940, leaving her home and property to Ralph and his sister Mrs. Helen Crane, he executed letters conveying interest in his estate to his sister, in order that his wife get "her claws on anything." After Ralph Alburger's death in 1945, Mrs. Alburger attempted to gain interest in her late husband's estate through legal chicanery. The case made it's way to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which found for Mrs. Crane in 1950.