Oliver Parks

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. In October 1938 Gen Arnold brought in the top three aviation school representatives to request they establish an unfunded startup of CPTP schools at their own risk. These were Oliver Parks of Parks Air College, C.C.Mosley of the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute, and Theopholis Lee of the Boeing School of Aeronautics; all agreed to start work.^[1] In 1939 Oliver Parks was brought to Alabama to set up a Civilian Pilot Training Program, CPTP, for the University of Alabama at Van de Graaff Field.^[2] 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 1944, Parks conducted a nationwide survey to see what features the potential pool of 70,000 new post-war pilots would want in a personal aircraft.^[3]

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.^[4]

References

1. ^ The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume Six Men and Planes. 
2. ^ Gilbert Guinn. 
3. ^ Popular Science: 112. June 1944. 
4. ^ Barnes Warnock McCormick, Conrad F. Newberry, Eric Jumper, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Aerospace engineering education during the first century of flight. 

External links

• Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology
• Saint Louis University

Persondata
Name	Parks, Oliver
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Date of birth	June 10, 1899
Place of birth
Date of death	February 28, 1985
Place of death