An Expose: Harold "Keith" Fredericksen, Part VIII

Harold Keith Fredericksen was born on January 11, 1924, the third son born to Harriet Paul and Frederik Christian Fredericksen. He joined brother Charles and Orval, and later helped greet twins Jack and Jean, and brother Wesley.


Front row: Orval, Chuck, Keith; Back row: F.Chris, Jack, Harriet, Jean

They came to Boundary County, Idaho in 1929 and bought 160 acres (1/4 section) of District #6 near Copeland. In 1931, they added 80 acres up on the bench.

What we know about Keith comes from family stories, from these letters, and from reading between the lines in his letters home.

For instance, we know he adored his mother, was concerned for her welfare, and respected her strength and wisdom.

We know he was close to his brothers and his sister, writing them frequently and worrying about their futures as much as his own. We know he loved to hunt with Jack, to tease Orval and Jean, and looked up to Chuck. He enjoyed the news of each new niece and nephew.

He loved the farm, had an intense interest in the crops, the planting, the equipment and the success of the farming.

He graduated from Bonners Ferry High School in 1942. His report cards show that his grades were a scattered mix of A's , B's, and some C's.

He was drafted in 1943 and was determined to do a good job for his country. We know he was one of thirty-five Boundary County men who lost their lives in the war.



We know he fully intended to return to Boundary County after the war. After seeing England and Scotland and much of the United States in his time in service, would he would have been content working a small farm in northern Idaho? We do not know.

We do know his death changed the course of family history in Boundary County.

My father rarely talked about Keith. When my mother did, she cried. Her memories were mixed with a brother (Arden) who's B-17 crashed (and it was unclear for awhile what happened to him) with a brother-in-law who'd been killed, while at the time being out of contact with her husband who was somewhere in the Pacific. It was an emotional time for her and it never fully healed.


SSGT 385th Bomb GP AAF, WWII AM & 4 OLC - PH
(WWII Air Medal with 4 Oak Leaf Clusters, Purple Heart)

I was born in 1957. By then, Keith had been gone twelve years. The family had learned to cope with the deaths during those years and their lives had moved on. In what had to be the most difficult decision of her life, Harriet sold the bench property and the house in 1946. She rented out the valley land to a family friend who farmed it until her death in 1966 and this was her primary income for those twenty years. That farm was then sold. This decision was necessary. None of the other family members wanted to carry on the farming tradition. Chuck went into retail work, running a grocery store in town and eventually moving to Pullman, Washington to operate a hardware store. Orval joined the Post Office and moved to town (Bonners Ferry). Jack went to college, then on to southern Idaho and finally to California. Jean married and moved to Sitka, Alaska to be with a husband who owned a fishing boat. Harriet moved to a house just down the block from Orval after selling the farm.

The wounds remained.

As Gary noted so poignantly in his review of all these family documents: "I originally thought that Grandma Fred kept only the War Department letters about Keith in a box in the closet in the hallway in her home in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. As a boy I used to bug her about what was in the box on the shelf in the entryway closet. She always resisted. But once when I was about 14 she agreed that I could look. But once the box was down and open, Grandma Fred began to sob and I knew that some powerful sorrow was contained in this box. I never asked her again."

It should be noted that there were also many pictures of Grandpa Fred and of Wesley in this box.

Many, many years later - in 1998, my parent's would receive a letter from a member of a flight crew that had seen the accident. Here's the contents of that letter:

12 June 1998, Donald Hayes wrote to Arden Lannigan (Nada's brother) with the following:

"The editor of the "Hard Life Herald" bomb group newsletter printed my request about anyone who knew why, when, where Lynch's plane went down. He said (the guy who phoned me tonight) that the pilot named Ritchie always flew too close in formation and had been warned just a few days before"

"The group was on the way to bomb Kiel, were over the North Sea, and Ritchie was in the #4 spot behind and below the lead plane. Hagman, the pilot who phoned me, was off Ritchie's wing when he saw Ritchie's B-17 engines chew the lead plane up. Both went down, but he saw guys inside trying to bail out - and never did. The tail gunner flying with Leo's crew that day was a "fill-in" for their regular gunner, Jerry Gentis, who now lives in Jenks, Oklahoma. I'm going to phone him tomorrow if he has a phone. And Hagman gave me his phone number and fax number in case you or Tom McGonigal want to talk to to him."

"By the way, one of the men on Ritchie's crew was a guy called "Whitey" cuz he had white hair and was from Bonners Ferry, Harold Fredericksen. I'll have to suppose you know him - a small town you know."

I had a conversation with both my parents after this note arrived via Uncle Arden. They were devastated all over again. The grief was just as fresh then as it had been more than fifty years prior when the event took place. This is why these letters mean so much to the family.

What I've presented to you with the expert assistance of brother Gary is only about a quarter of what was in the box. The letters and pictures and government documents are mind-boggling, heart-wrenching, and hold an emotional value unequaled by any other single thing we have.



And suddenly, all the trips we made as a family to the Grandview Cemetery on the hill overlooking Bonners Ferry come into sharp focus. Memorial Day. Dad on his knees lovingly cleaning the joint gravestone of his father, mother, and brothers, Wesley and Keith. My mom arranging lilacs and tulips in a water can placed beside the grave. Dad trimming back the spirea bush behind the grave-- all of these rituals lovingly remembered. For him, it was a time of memory and a labor of love.

For me, it was the perfect example of how not to forget.



THE END

Source:
“Two B-17’s Collide, Uncle Keith Died” by Gary Fredericksen, August 2009.
Family Archives and copies of official records

Harold Keith Fredericksen:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII