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."
