Dunn County knew Corde: 21-year-old adrenaline junkie’s life cut short

• Fredericks

Kenny Fredericks and his son, Corde, are pictured at MMA fights in New Town earlier this year.

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Corde Thomas Fredericks, 21, a former Killdeer High School wrestling star, could light up the room with a smile. But that smile is gone now as he died suddenly Thursday and the cause is unclear, family members said.

He loved extreme sports and had “a fearless attitude,” his brother, Allias Fredericks, said.

The only thing matching that attitude was the size of his heart, family and friends said.

“A lot of people seen this outer shell of him, you know, a big badass roughneck, you know, a tough guy,” said Jake Sage, his brother-in-law. “But deep down inside, he was a teddy bear.”

His energy was infectious, Sage added.

“He had so much confidence about doing the impossible, he made the people around him believe that he could do it and it wasn’t a big deal,” Shadd Fredericks, Corde Fredericks’ cousin, said.

Corde Fredericks was the “closest you can humanly get” to being invincible, he added.

“He made you feel that way around him,” Shadd Fredericks said.

He participated in high school sports at Killdeer Public School, where he excelled at wrestling.

“He was the state runner-up at 171 pounds his senior year,” said Shane Olson, KHS wrestling coach. “Everything just came really easy and natural for him as far as athleticism and strength.”

He also enjoyed bull riding, motocross, snowmobiles and had been involved with mixed martial arts fighting for the last two years.

“He was definitively an adrenaline junkie,” Kami Kling, a friend, stated in an email.

Corde Fredericks’ mother, Pam, said he was the most adventurous among his 10 siblings.

“He was right smack dab in the middle and he’s left us with quite the stories,” she said. “He was the risk-taker in the family, and gave his mom and dad heart attacks all the time.”

Although Pam Fredericks enjoyed watching most sports he participated in, she couldn’t bring herself to go to his MMA fights.

“I stayed at home and prayed,” she said.

Corde Fredericks was always willing to lend a helping hand and never left anyone behind, family said.

“He didn’t have to do much to lift you up,” Sage said. “He was real kind-hearted.”

Corde Fredericks treated his nieces and nephews as if they were his own children, he added.

“All his younger brothers, younger nieces and nephews, they all looked up to him a lot,” Sage said.

The Fredericks family recently took a trip to Jamaica.

“We are just thanking the lord for those awesome 10 days with him,” Pam Fredericks said. “The first thing he had to do is he wanted to scuba dive, so he got all the boys in on that.

“There was never a dull moment around that boy,” she added.

Corde Fredericks had been working in the oilfield and was saving money to go to college, she said.

His father, Kenny, is a pilot, and Corde Fredericks and his brothers built an apartment in his airplane hanger.

“We call it the bunkhouse or the man cave,” Pam Fredericks said with a laugh. “They made it into a really nice apartment.”

He wanted to be a rancher and was finalizing plans to get his ranch started, she said.

“His next big endeavor was he wanted to go skydiving,” Pam Fredericks said.

Kenny Fredericks found his son unresponsive inside his vehicle at the ranch Thursday, family said.

The family is awaiting information about how he died.

“It goes without saying that Corde’s going to be missed beyond words and not just by the family, but by all his friends and everyone he’s touched over the years in this whole county,” his uncle, Lyndon Fredericks, said.

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