Oliver Parks
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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 the aviation industry’s existence. 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; by the end of World War II, more than 37,000 cadets (more than 10% of the Air Corps) had received their primary flight instruction at a Parks institution. In 1946, having concluded that future aviation leaders would need a broader, more academic education, Parks gave the college named after him to Saint Louis University, a Jesuit institution located across the Mississippi River from Parks’ Cahokia, Illinois campus, where it was renamed the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology of Saint Louis University.
