Melinda Kane (D-Cherry Hill) became the first Gold Star Mother to serve in the New Jersey Legislature when she won a Camden County Assembly seat in a January special election convention. Her son, Marine Lance Corporal Jeremy Kane, was killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan in 2010 while in the Bravo Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The 23-year-old son of State Sen. David Van Alstyne (R-Englewood) was killed in August 1952 after a fighter jet lost its wing tip just before takeoff during a training flight near Orlando, Florida. Second Lt. David Van Alstyne III enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after he graduated from Williams College.
Lamson Williams, a 23-year-old Marine private serving in the Korean War, was killed by hostile shell fragments at Changwa Dong on May 28, 1952. His brother, Harrison A. Williams, Jr., a World War II veteran, later served two terms in the House and four terms in the U.S. Senate. Lamson Williams’ death exposed a hole in a New Jersey law that permitted soldiers to execute unwitnessed, handwritten wills while at war; his will was rejected by a judge who ruled that the state law affecting soldiers during wartime didn’t apply to Korean War veterans because it was a police action. Williams’ parents gave their son’s estate to his 21-year-old widow anyway.
The 23-year-old son of State Sen. David Van Alstyne (R-Englewood) was killed in August 1952 after a fighter jet lost its wing tip just before takeoff during a training flight near Orlando, Florida. Second Lt. David Van Alstyne III enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after he graduated from Williams College.
Private Gustave Nadler, 20, whose father was the Mayor of Allendale, was killed in action in France in November 1918. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army at the start of World War I.
U.S. Navy veteran Harold “Bud Costill, who was an 18-year-old sailor on the USS West Virginia when he was killed when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Costill’s remains were not identified until DNA tests were completed in June 2019. He had been officially listed as missing in action for nearly 78 years. Costill’s brother, 93-year-old former Gloucester County Freeholder and Clayton Mayor Gene Costill, attended a funeral service in 2019, two years before his own death.
