Saint Louis University
Acquires an Aviation School
On August 1, 1927, a little more than two months after Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight from New York to Paris in the "Spirit of St. Louis," a young man by the name of Oliver "Lafe" Parks opened Parks Air College in a rented hangar at Lambert Field in St. Louis. Parks believed, prophetically, that aviation had a great future and saw very early on the need for instruction in aircraft design, maintenance and flight safety.
Mr. Parks was determined to raise the standards of aviation education. In pursuing this end, Parks College became the first federally approved school of aeronautics. In 1928, Mr. Parks moved his school from Lambert Field to a new home across the Mississippi River in Cahokia, Illinois. Shortly after the move, Parks opened an aircraft factory in conjunction with the college. During those early years, Parks College was an official stop in the famous coast-to-coast air races. Among the aviation greats who visited the campus were Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Doolittle and Eddie Rickenbacker.
During the World War II era, Parks college and its subsidiaries were responsible for training one out of every 10 U. S. Army Air Corps pilots, plus thousands of aircraft mechanics. After the war, Mr. Parks took a critical look at his college and the entire field of aviation. With characteristic vision, he realized that future aviation leaders would need a broader based academic education. To that end, he gave Parks College to Saint Louis University in 1946. Thus the oldest federally certified institution of aviation became part of the oldest University west of the Mississippi.
