June 14, 1935 – January 10, 2023

Capt. Arthur Hugh Fredrickson, USN (Ret.), passed away on January 10, 2023. He was 87.

Art was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and would have returned after retirement from the Navy if only it weren’t so cold there! Asked to describe his life, he would have said in typical Minnesota style, “It could have been worser. Not half bad, pretty good even.”

Art had an illustrious career in the U.S. Navy that he absolutely loved. It began with his enlistment in the Naval Air Reserve at age eighteen and concluded as Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CV-61). As a fighter pilot, he accumulated more than 4000 flight hours, 700+ carrier-arrested landings, and 137 combat sorties. He held the Legion of Merit, Air Medal with eight Strike/Flight awards, Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V, Navy Achievement Medal, Navy Unit Commendation, Navy Expeditionary Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with 3 Bronze Stars, Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, and Vietnam Campaign Medal with device.

He was married for 35 years to his Macalester College sweetheart, Agnete (“Aggie”) Utoft Bollesen Fredrickson. Together they raised a family and navigated military life, including multiple moves for tours of duty along both east and west coasts. Places they lived included Virginia Beach, Burke, and Springfield, Virginia as well as Key West, Florida; San Diego, California; and Bremerton, Washington. They treated cross-country household moves as vacations, taking time along the way to sightsee in national parks and to visit family scattered from Washington, DC to Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, and Washington. A cruise deployment to the Mediterranean Sea allowed for a very special and memorable six months for the family in which Aggie, Art’s Mom Isabelle, and the children traveled Europe, following the ship’s port schedule and visiting with Art whenever he could come ashore. Upon his military retirement, Art and Aggie settled in Springfield, Va. Art continued flying professionally, piloting commercial passenger planes for another 10ish years while chafing at FAA age restrictions for commercial airline pilots.

Art and Aggie had three daughters: Pam Person, Kirstin Fredrickson, and Sonja Harris. Or as Art called them, Pameroo/George, Rascal, and Tootie Rootie. He was always ready with “fatherly” advice, e.g., don’t eat Polar Bear liver, use short sentences, and lock your doors! He raised his kids to be independent, though he sometimes opined that he did too good a job of that. Upon Aggie’s death in 1993, Art became the family correspondent, focused on keeping close ties among the entire extended family. He took that role seriously, sending regular email updates to a large distribution list. Topics ranged from the usual family news to travelogues and the latest technology developments.

In 1999, Art married his second wife, Virginia Anne Scott Fredrickson, to whom he was married for nearly 23 years until her death in 2022. They were an active couple. He and Anne traveled across the country by train, plane, and automobile, visiting far-flung family, attending Anne’s nursing conferences and enrolling in Road Scholar Learning Adventures on a variety of topics. People on his email distribution list were treated to descriptions of where they’d been and what they’d learned—insights gleaned from courses taught by the Culinary Institute of America, Disney executives and staff who led them on behind-the-scenes tours of Disney theme parks, L.L. Bean fly fishing instructors, and more. They often drove to Florida to visit Anne’s family and close friends, timing the trips to see baseball spring training games.

Art had a great sense of humor, with a boisterous laugh and a twinkle in his eye. He had a favorite joke, dubbed “The Ole Joke”; only a few of the people he tried to tell it to actually heard the punch line because he’d laugh so hard that he couldn’t finish telling it. Art enjoyed traveling, playing cards, church fellowship, gardening and houseplants (particularly violets), and Dairy Queen M&M blizzards. A sports fan, he held season tickets to the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Redskins (as they were known then) football teams. Art threw out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners baseball game while he was Commanding Officer of the USS Ranger.

In addition to his three daughters and their spouses, Art leaves behind three stepchildren, Cyndie Kronz, Andy Scott, and Susi Nuccio and their spouses; 11 grandchildren; 10 greatgrandchildren; and a large extended family of in-laws, cousins, nieces, and nephews. He also leaves behind his and Anne’s beloved cat, Gloria Vanderbilt.

Art will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery with full honors, currently expected to be in summer 2024.

From your children, we love you, Dad. To use your own words, “Ya done good!”