Stern had knack for seeing big projects through
By Jonathan Knutson
The Forum - 09/18/1999

As a boy, William Stern trapped frogs and sold them to Fargo restaurants. As a man, he won national recognition in the Republican Party and helped bring air service to Fargo more than 70 years ago.

Stern - a Fargo banker and political leader - may be best remembered for his contributions to aviation.

He was one of three men who selected the site of Fargo's Hector International Airport, and he helped the fledgling Northwest Airlines get off the ground.

"He was very effective in helping us in some of our route cases," said former Northwest Airlines president M.J. Lapenski in 1981.

Lapenski noted that Stern helped the Minneapolis-based airline obtain financing in its infancy and joined its board of directors in 1931, when the airline began air service to North Dakota. Stern also spent several years as special assistant to the airline's one-time president, Croil Hunter.

Hunter was born in Casselton, N.D., and moved as a child to Fargo, where one of his neighbors was the young William Stern.

Stern's life revolved around Fargo, banking, aviation and politics.

The son of Fargo financier Alex Stern, William Stern was born in downtown Fargo in 1886. Later in life, Stern was fond of saying that his bank office looked out on the building in which he was born.

After high school, he joined his father's company and began a long business career of his own.

But that career was interrupted by World War I.

In 1917 Stern was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He served in the Quartermaster Corps in Maryland and later in France. While in France, he developed his lifelong interests in aviation and veteran affairs. He helped organize the American Legion in 1919 and played a prominent role nationally in the organization for many years.

Returning to Fargo after the war, he resumed his business career. In 1925 he became cashier and vice president of Dakota National Bank, which his father and others had founded eight years earlier. He later became president of the bank and spent many years in the position. The former Dakota National Bank is now part of U.S. Bank.

For decades Stern was a familiar figure in downtown Fargo. An article in a 1951 issue of the Northwest Airline employee newsletter described Stern, one of the airline's directors, as "a slight, genial man with a shrewd look and ready smile. ... He always wears a blue suit and high black shoes - in fact, he never has owned a pair of Oxfords. And shhh, here's a secret - he wears long underwear both summer and winter."

As a banker and Fargo booster, Stern naturally wanted the city to continue growing. By the mid 1920s, he was convinced that would happen only if Fargo got an airport.

Stern, Dr. Frank Darrow and W.P. Chesnut decided some farmland northwest of the city would make an excellent site for an airport. The three persuaded the land's owner, Martin Hector, to let them establish an airport there.

The airport began operations in 1927; Hector donated the land to the city four years later.

Stern was a big behind-the-scenes player in politics, both nationally and locally, for virtually his entire adult life.

Retired Fargo businessman Edward Stern knew William Stern, to whom he wasn't related, for many years.

"Bill Stern was sort of a king maker. He played a big role in selecting the political leadership of Fargo," Ed Stern said.

John D. Paulson, former Forum Editor, wrote this in a 1962 column. "One of the rather fantastic stories of Cass County politics is the place of prominence that William Stern has held for nigh onto 30 years. ... He was never one to argue about party principles, or platforms in the county meetings. His dedication has been to practical politics. All he has insisted on is having a hand in the selection of candidates for the Legislature; the selection of precinct committeemen and the selection of delegates to the state convention."

Stern was a player on the national political stage, too. He was a longtime Republican national committeeman and a friend of many prominent Republicans, including Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

He also was a close and longtime friend of Sen. Warren Magnuson, D-Wash., who grew up in Moorhead.

His friendship with Magnuson made Stern a witness - or near witness, depending on whom you believe - to one of the more celebrated events in American history.

In 1951 Stern and Magnuson visited Japan, Korea and other points in Asia. On the afternoon of April 11, they met in Toyko with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the gifted, prima donna-ish supreme commander of allied forces in the Far East.

Minutes after Stern and Magnuson left MacArthur's residence, according to Stern, MacArthur received word that he had been relieved of his command by President Truman.

Reporters believed Stern and Magnuson had been with MacArthur when he received the news, and pressed the two for details of MacArthur's reaction.

"That afternoon was like a nightmare," Stern said later. "Wire service reporters hounded Magnuson and me wherever we went."

Magnuson visited Stern in Fargo in 1963 and told a slightly different story to a Forum reporter. As Magnusson recalled it, he and Stern were eating lunch with MacArthur when the general got the bad news.

Official accounts say that MacArthur learned of his dismissal while lunching with visitors. It's unclear if his guests included Stern and Magnuson.

Stern once made a tongue-in-cheek attempt to write Fargo into the history books.

Chicago and Philadelphia were fighting tooth and nail to host the 1940 Republican national convention. Ninety-eight national committeemen were to pick the winner.

Stern, the North Dakota national committeeman, lightheartedly proposed Fargo as an alternative site.

"We have 5,000 square miles in and around the city - and they're all square," he said. "We have two hotels, and I have to say they're all protected by police."

The Republican committeemen weren't persuaded - they picked Philadelphia - but they were amused. They gave Stern an ivory gavel with which he could call the convention to order, should it ever come to Fargo.