Oliver Parks
| Oliver Lafe Parks | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 10, 1899 |
| Died | February 28, 1985 (aged 85) |
| Known for | Founder of Parks College |
Oliver L. "Lafe" Parks (June 10, 1899 - February 28, 1985) was a pioneer in the fields of pilot training and aviation studies in the early decades of aviation.
Parks' career started as a Chevrolet salesman at the Gravois Motor corporation in St. Louis. Combining his sales and piloting skills, Parks flew a Standard J with the Gravois Motor logo painted on the fuselage and wings.
A friend of Charles Lindbergh, Parks founded the Parks Air College in 1927 and quickly established higher standards for the amount and quality of training that student pilots were required to complete to earn their commercial pilot’s certification. In the late 1930s, with war brewing again in Europe and no air force in existence, Parks also convinced the Air Corps that the training program at his college could adequately prepare military pilots for combat missions. In October 1938, General Hap Arnold brought in the top three aviation school representatives to request they establish an unfunded startup of Civilian Pilot Training Program schools at their own risk. These were Oliver Parks of Parks Air College, C. C. Moseley of the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute, and Theopholis Lee of the Boeing School of Aeronautics; all agreed. In 1939, Oliver Parks was brought to Alabama to set up a Civilian Pilot Training Program for the University of Alabama at Van de Graaff Field. In 1940, he leased all of Curtiss-Steinberg Airport (now St. Louis Downtown Airport), which was renamed Curtiss-Parks Airport, for his school. By the end of World War II, more than 37,000 cadets (more than 10% of the Air Corps and "fully one-sixth of all U.S. Army pilots of the era") had received their primary flight instruction at a Parks institution.
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