Obituary: Trumpet was a first love for Quentin Wood

He worked in silver mines in Colorado and oil fields in Wyoming, listened in on Russian communications while in the Air Force in Alaska, and served as city engineer in Eden Prairie and New Brighton.

But it was his extracurricular pursuits -- specifically, his passion for singing and playing traditional American music -- that brought Quentin K. Wood recognition until his death in August at age 79.

"He loved his Dixieland and he loved his barbershop harmony," said Wes Hatlestad, who along with Wood performed in the Minneapolis Commodores, a barbershop chorus, and in the Dixiedores, a spinoff band that Wood, a self-taught trumpet player, helped found.

Various incarnations of the Commodores have been singing their a cappella harmonies since 1944, and while their ranks have thinned in recent years, the group has a following large enough that annual shows still have been staged at Benson Great Hall at Bethel University in Arden Hills.

At one time, however, the Commodores were popular enough to fill Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota.

There, in 1992, Wood served as chairman of the annual show -- the first of three such opportunities -- a role that required him to choose the show's theme and to help with the writing of skits and selection of songs.

"It's quite a job," said Hatlestad, who held the position in 1995, and figured once was enough for him. He couldn't recall the specifics of the Wood-helmed shows, "Summer Sounds," "Tin Pan Alley" and "There's No Business Like Show Business," but said one could wager that the Dixiedores had prominent roles in them.

A friend, Marilynn Erickson, who lived with Wood in Shoreview during his later years, said that Wood, as a child, envied his older sisters because they took piano lessons. His mother, feeling sorry for him, got him a trumpet, and Wood would ride around his native Crookston, Minn., "on his bicycle tooting his horn," Erickson said.

In 1951, he graduated from Crookston High School, and after traveling to the silver mines and the oil fields, and serving four years in the Air Force, he earned an engineering degree from the University of North Dakota.

He was city engineer in Eden Prairie from 1963 to 1968, Erickson said, and public works director and engineer in New Brighton from 1968 to 1973. Wood ended his engineering career in his own firm, Erickson said, and then drove school buses and worked with special education students in the Osseo School District.

A daughter, Sara Wood, was mentally handicapped, and the district knew of his rapport with special-needs children, Erickson said.

In addition to Erickson and daughter Sara, Wood is survived by a son, Mitch; a daughter, Shelly Morehead; grandchildren and a great-grandson. Services were held last Thursday.