A legend recently passed away. Fred Quam filled his 108 years with adventure, kindness and a passion for the Happy Hooligans, the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Wing based in Fargo, North Dakota. I had the opportunity to spend time with Fred over the years, including at the Fargo Air Museum’s library, which is named in his honor.
Fred was the last inaugural living member of the Happy Hooligans. The unit wasn’t nearly as sophisticated then. As he said once, they got started with just “one toolbox, two airplanes and no other equipment.” They’ve come a long way, but Fred’s memory will never be lost.
In honor of Fred and his many notable accomplishments, I’m sharing his story here. I originally wrote this in 2011, and it was published in the North Dakota Guardian.
From the Beginning: Quam Among First Airmen in N.D. Air National Guard
Fred Quam holds a title that only two other men alive today can claim: He is one of the inaugural Happy Hooligans. In fact, he was a Hooligan before they were even called Hooligans.
Their diminishing ranks don’t concern him as much as the younger Airmen who refuse to believe the stories from the time North Dakota got its first-ever Air National Guard unit on Jan. 16, 1947.
“It’s kind of fun to think back,” he says, “but what bothers me is some of these young guys now don’t believe what we tell them. They say, ‘Nobody ever did that.’”
But they did do that. They hauled coal into the stove in the maintenance office to keep it warm, and then took “turn on night duty to keep the fires going.” Gasoline-powered ground heaters ran in the hangars and word spread that when the birds started dropping to the floor from the exhaust fumes, it was time to shut them down. In the days before machines kept the flightlines clean, Airmen did it with a broom and dustpan. In winter, they sometimes had to hand-crank the planes to get them started – but first they had to shovel them out.
At one time, the Air Guard in Fargo had 35 planes, including 28 P-51 Mustangs, which are single-seat fighter aircraft.
“In the wintertime, you’d get a windstorm and snow and these airplanes were just about all covered, and we didn’t have a front-end loader or a bucket loader or a Bobcat to (clear the snow),” Quam says. “… We’d have to shovel ’em out, then we’d have to wait for the city to come with their blower, and they’d make a path for us. And then we’d hook onto each plan individually after we’d shovel out the front wheel … get the ramp all cleared, get them all parked in a nice row and come back in the morning and (do) the same thing all over again.”
Those were just some of the tasks that helped Quam and the others earn their full-time salary of $170 a month.
Keeping Them Flying
Quam joined the Air Guard as a full-time aircraft mechanic after almost four years in the active-duty Air Force. There were only 45 other full-time Hooligans in 1947, including Homer Goebel and Marshall Johnson, the other two charter members still alive. Within a year, Quam made line chief and was in charge of other mechanics. After serving stateside on active-duty for the Korean War from April 1951 until November 1952, he moved into quality control, which is where he stayed until his retirement in 1976 as a chief master sergeant.
At 94, he can still rattle off the planes he worked on over the years with a memory sharper than men half his age. First, there was the A-20 Havoc, a light bomber, which is what he learned to maintain at factory school. Then came the T-6 Texan training aircraft, P-51 Mustang, B-25 Mitchell bomber, C-47 Skytrain transport plane, C-46 Commando transport plane, F94A Starfire interceptor plane, T-33A Shooting Star training plane, F-89 Scorpion interceptor, F-102 Delta Dagger interceptor and F-101 Voodoo fighter. He ended his career with the F-4 Phantom fighter jet.
“I may have missed one or two,” Quam says humbly upon finishing the list.
He says the P-51 was his favorite, and he gets a bit of a dreamy look on his face as he says, “It’s just the sound of it, I guess. This one, when it goes, it just kind of gets to you.”
When the North Dakota Air Guard first got off the ground, there were two T-6 aircraft on base for Quam and two or three other mechanics to work on.
“One day (the commander, Lt. Col. Richard Neece) was going to go somewhere and one of the struts on the airplane was flat and the other one was up, so it was sitting cockeyed,” Quam recalls. “We had no tools to fix it, so (the commander) says, ‘Let the air out of the other one.’ So, we let the air out so it leveled out, and then he flew to Omaha.”
In Omaha, the commander had air pumped in and scrounged up a toolbox to bring back.
“So, that’s how we got started: one toolbox, two airplanes and no other equipment.”
Responding at Home
There had been other growing pains starting the never-before-seen unit in 1947. First came the debate of which city would get an Air Guard unit: Grand Forks or Fargo. Then, the Airmen had a few operational disagreements with the airport manager, although he “finally warmed up to us after he found out all the good things we could do for the airport,” Quam says.
The community would soon see the Hooligans’ reach stretch beyond Fargo’s Hector Field.
In the winter of 1949, Operation Haylift had the Guardsmen flying a C-47 over ranches in western North Dakota after an abundance of snow prevented farmers from getting feed to their cattle. Airmen were secured to tee cargo aircraft by ropes tied around their waists as they kicked bales out where needed.
“It was cold weather, and we had a tough time keeping the planes going,” Quam says.
Although they were based out of the Minot Air Force Base for the mission, they would fly the plane back to Fargo each night to keep it indoors during the blizzard conditions.
The weather made it a dangerous mission, and one man, Maj. Donald C. Jones, didn’t survive.
As commander, Jones had flown to the mission site in a P-51. He called Quam to say he was on his way home, but the blustery weather contributed to the plane crashing just 20 minutes later.
Over the years, the Hooligans would respond to more natural disasters, including flooding and the Fargo tornado of 1957. The F5-category twister had wiped out a nine-mile swath of Fargo, missing Quam’s house by just half of a block.
“I stood on the corner of 15th Avenue and Broadway all night trying to keep people from … going beyond this point,” Quam says. “… I was bad and we, the Guard, controlled traffic … ’til everything got back in order again so they could go up and down the streets.”
One of the more unique humanitarian missions Quam says involved transporting a young man with polio, who was encased in an iron lung, to a hospital out of state.
“Of course, they didn’t have the means to treat it well here, so we, with our C-47, transported him with the iron lung and everything to another hospital. So, that was a special mission. … It was quite a job to rig up equipment to keep the lung running.”
Still Serving
After 33 years as a Happy Hooligan, Quam has now spent 34 years as a retired Happy Hooligan. Don’t be fooled by the word “retired,” though. He’s a life member of the El Zagal Shrine and American Legion, a charter member of the Golden K Kiwanis and serves as a chaplain for the Masonic Daylight Lodge #135.
In 2002, Quam helped to get the Fargo Air Museum started. Volunteerism wasn’t new to him, having won in 1959 one of only two Community Service Awards ever presented in the N.D. Air Guard. It took on a new importance then, however, as he tried to stay busy after losing Lois, his wife of 58 years.
When Quam walked into the museum one day and asked what needed to be done, he was directed to a stack of magazines upstairs that could use some organizing. Before long, he connected with a couple from St. Paul who were impressed with his efforts. They regularly toured military museums but rarely found libraries. After the man passed away, more than 40 boxes of military books from his personal library were donated to the museum. The library continued to grow from there.
Today, Quam track more than 2,600 books and 100 journals and magazines by description, catalog number, title, author, publication date and more. He logs more regularly – all on the computer, which he taught himself to use at age 80. Community members and college students rely on the library’s vast collection to supplement their research on all things aircraft and military.
Quam continues to volunteer about six hours a week at the library, which was named the Fred Quam Research Library in his honor just last year. During the ceremony, Retired. Maj. Gen. Alexander Macdonald, former North Dakota adjutant general, and Retired Maj. En. Darrol Schroeder, former chief of staff, unveiled a portrait of Quam that now hangs in the library.
“That was pretty special,” he says. “My kids were all here.”
On a recent winter day, as Quam sat in the library that now bears his name and likeness, he was asked what advice he might have for those serving today. He pondered that for a few moments and before replying, “Do what you want to do and do it good.”
His life of service as a Hooligan and active retiree show that he takes his own advice.
