Camden People - Wilfred L. Dube

WILFRED L. DUBE was born in New York on July 17, 1906, one of at least five children born to Frank and Amanda Dube. Frank Dube was a machinist who had brought his family to New York from one of the English speaking provinces of Canada in 1892. Besides Wilfred there were four older children living at home in Schenectady NY when the census was taken in 1910, Albert, Alberta, Neal, and Alma. Sadly, Amanda Dube passed away before 1920, and in January of 1920 Wilfred Dube was in foster care, living at 612-1/2 Smith Avenue with John and Minnie Ryan, his foster parents.

Wilfred Dube was part of Camden's law enforcement scene for many years. Although he had left school after the eight grade, he was self-taught and quite well read. In 1926, before he was 21 years old, he graduated from the New Jersey State Police Academy at Sea Girt NJ, in that institution's twelfth graduating class. His badge number was 288. After a short spell in North Jersey, where he worked on horseback, Trooper Dube was transferred to motorcycle duty, and by 1928 was serving in South Jersey. In that year, while stationed at the Berlin barracks, he met and married Elizabeth Pauline Von Der Tann. The April 1930 Census shows Mr. and Mrs. Dube living at 101 Chestnut Street in Audubon NJ.

Wilfred L. Dube later worked as an investigator with the Camden County prosecutors office. he was hired by Samuel P. Orlando in 1937, and served under longtime Chief of Detectives Larry Doran and his successor, James J. Mulligan. Wilfred Dube followed Mulligan as Chief of Detectives and retired as Chief. His successor, named by then-Camden County Prosecutor Norman Heine, was to be Philip J. Large, but when Large was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the post went to Russell Maurer. After leaving the Prosecutor's Office Wilfred Dube founded a guard service, which did quite well. Mr. and Mrs. Dube traveled extensively in his later years.

Last a resident of Cherry Hill NJ, Wilfred L. Dube he passed away in October of 1980, survived by his wife and daughter Yvonne, three grand-children, and by 2005 four-great-grandchildren.

Camden Courier-Post - February 7, 1933

CAMDEN PAIR ADMIT 4 SHORE ROBBERIES
Dandrea Gets 5 to 7 Years in Prison; Pal is Put on Probation

Mays Landing, Feb. 6.-One Camden man was sentenced to State's Prison for five to seven years and another was placed on probation for three years when they pleaded guilty on four indictments charging holdup and robbery. Sentence was imposed by Judge William H. Smathers in criminal court here today.

The prison term was meted out to Nicholas Dandrea, 24, who gave his address as 334 Clinton street, Camden. He was arrested November 17 by State Troopers Martin Hurden and Wilfred L. Dube. The man placed on probation is Morris Feller, 26, of 1254 Haddon avenue. Both men had originally pleaded not guilty, but changed their pleas today.

They were charged with holding up and robbing Frank Romeo, 40, and Emilio Cichetto, 51, of Minotolo, on October 9; Daniel Pentaleo, of Franklin street, Landisville, on October 16, and also on November 6, and Adam Procaccino, of Landisville, on November 8.

Romeo and Chichetto reported to state troopers when they were held up that they were tied to trees by Feller and Dandrea, who escaped in Chichetto's car. Ninety-six dollars, taken from the two men, was lost by the bandits in a crap game in Landisville, according to the troopers. Pantaleo was held up, robbed of $112, tied with rope, kidnapped in his own car and thrown out in a woods on October 16, He was putting his car in his garage when the two men placed guns at his side, he told the police. On November 6 they returned and again went through the same procedure, but this time did not obtain money. Pantaleo identified both men.

Procaccino, a waiter in a Landisville lunch wagon, was robbed of $11 at 2.30 a. m. as he was walking to his home.

Judge Smathers, in placing Feller on probation, said he was taking into consideration the fact that it was his first offense.

A difficult case that Wilfred Dube investigated in 1953 was that of the tragic suicide of James S. Wilkie, son of a veteran Camden police officer, John V. Wilkie. For several days after the shooting, Sgt. Wilkie claimed that he had shot his son, in order that he receive a Catholic funeral. He retracted his confession after it became apparent that he could not deceive the city and county investigators, and was released after the grand jury refused to return an indictment.

This tragic case saw the involvement of many of Camden's law enforcement and legal community, including Benjamin Asbell, Mitchell H. Cohen, Thomas Murphy, James J. Mulligan, J. James Hainsworth, Samuel P. Orlando, John Healey, and Joseph Bennie, among others.

Camden Courier-Post - December 21, 1953

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Gettysburg PA Times - December 23, 1953

Detective Is Held For Shooting Son

Camden NJ (AP)- A Camden city detective, Sgt. John V. Wilkie, is being held on a manslaughter charge in the shooting of his 17 year-old son.
       Police said last night Wilkie told them his son was killed accidentally as he and the youth struggled for his service revolver Sunday morning.
       The boy's death had been called a suicide by Camden County Coroner John A. Healy. A pathology report indicated that the head wound sustained by the younger Wilkie was self-inflicted.
       Camden County Prosecutor Mitchell H. Cohen said the detective told him he tried to take his own life after his son was shot but the pistol misfired.
       Wilkie was charged with manslaughter and held in custody pending a hearing to set bail.

Camden Courier-Post - December 24, 1953

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Camden Courier-Post - December 26, 1953


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Camden Courier-Post - December 28, 1953

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Camden Courier-Post - December 31, 1953
*Wilkie Freed By Vote of Grand Jury*

Camden Courier-Post - April 1, 2004
Ties That Bind by Christina Mitchell

Scrapbooks, Family Stories
Recall Lives Lived With Passion

"You must meet the most interesting people," Lisa Sollenberger said to me recently about this column.

She had just lost one of the treasures in her life, her 96-year-old grandmother, Elizabeth Dube'.

The truth is, I often meet interesting people like Elizabeth after they've died, when families gladly open their scrapbooks and loved ones jump off the pages.

This was one of those times.

Lisa has two scrapbooks that belonged to her grandmother, known to her three grandchildren as "Granel." Her husband, Wilfred L., was known as "Pa-pa."

There's Granel and Pa-pa on their trip to Bermuda. Granel when she graduated from Glassboro Teacher's College in the late '20s. Pa-pa in the staunch uniform of a New Jersey state trooper.

And there's Granel's lady-like handwriting describing and dating every major event.

"I really thought she would live to be well over 100," said Lisa, as she flipped through one scrapbook's stiff pages.

Elizabeth, who died March 21, was a woman who always looked "89 going on 60," according to Lisa, because she kept her figure and wore tailored clothes she sewed herself.

When her only child, Yvonne Wolf, first entered her mother's apartment at a Moorestown independent living facility days after her death, "I found two outfits, all pinned and patterned and ready to go."

"When you walked into her house, it always felt like she was waiting for you," recalled Lisa, mother to two of Elizabeth's four great-grandchildren.

Pa-pa was a broad man who could work any room he walked into. He enjoyed a good meal and a cigar and had the audacity to make a move on his future wife right in her parents' kitchen. In the late '20s, no less.

"Did my mother tell you that story?" Lisa giggled. "The first time he met her, her back was to him at the sink. And he walked up and put his arms around her. And then his friend introduced him!"

"He knew the minute he laid eyes on her he was going to marry her," said Yvonne of her father, then a confident young state trooper.

It was 1928, Elizabeth was fresh out of college and Pa-pa - or Doobie, as his wife called him - was billetted at the Berlin barracks of the state police, then the private home of Elizabeth's parents on the White Horse Pike. It was a routine living arrangement for troopers in those days and Yvonne remembers her mother's parents serving the police butter, "and we had to eat margarine."

"It was the best eatin' station in New Jersey," the Marlton resident added.

Doobie and his "honey" secretly eloped to Elkton, Md., spent a night in Camden at the Walt Whitman Hotel, then sprang the news on her parents. But if marriage began surreptitiously, it was hardly quiet thereafter.

"When they got together, the party began," Yvonne recalled of her parents, who lived with gusto. "Even if it was just the two of them."

Wilfred Dube' became chief of the Camden County detectives, then founded a guard service business, a venture that bought the couple a nice life: travel, summers in Florida, nights out at Lucien's or to watch the floor show at the Silver Lake Inn.

For a while, they lived just blocks from Yvonne and her three children in Cherry Hill.

"Whenever the kids got mad at me they would take their tricycles and ride to Granel's and Pa-pa's," said Yvonne, for treats of vanilla milk shakes made with Breyer's ice cream, Thin Mints and pound cake.

When Pa-pa died in 1980, Elizabeth forged a life of her own, in part in a white Lincoln Town Car powered by a heavy foot. That foot wore 3-inch heels until she was about 92.

She played bridge until she died and thanked her lucky stars she could remain independent.

"She had all her faculties, didn't she, Rog?" Yvonne asked of her husband, Roger.

Can't ask for more than that. Ninety-six years. All your faculties. A lifetime of memories.

Still, said Yvonne, it won't be easy to say goodbye.

"She led a happy life. That helps to deal with this," she mused, tilting back in a recliner. "But she's been so much a part of us for so long, it's gonna leave a hole."

Wide as a canyon, in fact.

And, yes, I do meet the most interesting people.

Camden Courier-Post - January 24, 1940


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