CLIFFORD VANDEGRIFT LANE was born in Camden, New Jersey on October 17, 1887 to Thomas Jefferson Lane and his wife, the former Georgianna Chew. He was one of ten children, seven of whom were still living in 1900. When the Census was taken that year, Clifford was the oldest of the four children still at home, being born ahead of William, Kate, and Jessie. Thomas Lane worked as a blacksmith. The 1900 Census shows the family residing at 638 South 2nd Street, two doors away from one-time Camden Fire Department member and Civil War naval veteran James H. Carey, who lived at 642 South 2nd Street. Clifford Lane would, in his majority, go on to serve for many years as a Camden firefighter. At 666 South 2nd Street lived another boy, Herbert Baxter, who was about the same age as Clifford Lane, and who also would serve for many years as a Camden fireman as an adult. Around the corner at 650 Locust lived Thomas Cheeseman, also about the same age as Clifford Lane, who became a career member of the Camden Police Department.

Clifford Lane married Lillian Helen Burrows on April 21, 1906. The 1910 Census shows him working as a machinist at the Victor Talking Machine Company factory and living at 1241 South 4th Street with his wife Lillian and their three children, Clifford R., Bella, and Georgianna. Another son, Lemuel H. Lane, was born in 1915. A fifth child, James Everton Lane, was born in 1916 but died the following February at the age of three months due to meningitis.

When he registered for the draft on June 5, 1917 Clifford V. Lane was living with his wife and children at 253 Mount Vernon Street in South Camden. He was the working as a machinist for the Armored Motor Car Company of Philadelphia.

The January 1920 Census shows the Lane family, which included father-in-law James Burrows, living at 534 Lester Terrace, a one block street that ran from Broadway to South 6th Street, opposite the New York Shipbuilding Corporation shipyards. A sixth child, Charles Snyder Lane, was born shortly after the Census was enumerated. The Lane family remained at this address as late as 1937. 

With work in the shipyards slowing down in the early 1920s, Clifford V. Lane went to work as a carpenter, and he was following this trade when the 1924 Camden City Directory was compiled. By Janauary 1, 1927 he had been appointed to the Camden Fire Department. He served from that date through the end of 1934 at Ladder Company 4, and most likely was still with that unit when it disbanded on July 5, 1936.

Sadly, Lillian H. Lane died due a kidney ailment on May 10, 1937. Clifford V. Lane continued to served with the Camden Fire Department as late as the spring of 1942, when he again registered for the draft. He had by this time remarried and had moved to Barrington, New Jersey. Clifford Lane and his wife Lou were then living at 709 Newton Avenue in Barrington. It is unclear as to exactly when Clifford V. Lane left the Fire Department. A mandatory retirement age of 65 was instituted in 1950, and he would have reached that in October of 1952.

Clifford V. Lane later returned to Camden. He was a Camden resident when he passed away in November of 1971.

Clifford V. Lane's grand-son, Clifford R. Lane Jr., was a star baseball player in high school. He graduated from Hammonton High School in 1960. He was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles baseball team out of high school, but elected to stay home after his father’s death in 1963 and help with the family business.