1940-1949: Air Corps train at Cahokia College

Oliver Parks was a forward thinker, who began training U.S. Army Air Corps cadets to become World War II pilots more than two years before the United States even declared war.

Parks, a pilot and former car salesman, founded Parks Air College in Cahokia in 1927, two months after Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Parks was operating training sites in both Cahokia and Alabama by 1939, when he and other heads of civilian air schools convinced military officials they could adequately train pilots for a war brewing in Europe.

Parks later opened two training sites in Missouri and one in Mississippi. Between 1939 and 1944, more than 37,000 men entered a Parks school to receive flight instruction, and more than 24,000 went on to become commissioned pilots.

When the war ended in 1945, "Parks Air College could join in on victory celebrations with the knowledge that it had done more than its fair share," wrote the Rev. William B. Faherty, author of the 1990 book, "Parks College: Legacy of an Aviation Pioneer."

In the early 1940s, Parks had new dorms built and otherwise expanded the Cahokia campus to serve both civilian students and Air Corps cadets. At one point, students in the mechanics program used equipment from 8 to 4:30 p.m. while the cadets' late shift ended at 2:30 a.m.

Parks ran a tight ship at his schools, expecting students to say "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" and tolerating no monkey business. Campus curfews were strictly enforced. Possession of liquor, even in a tavern, could result in dismissal.

Parks instructors were civilians, leaving Army officers and enlisted men available for front-line duty during World War II.

"The program would, by D-Day in Europe in June of 1944, have saved the Army and the taxpayer over $250 million a year in the estimate of Glenn E. Carter of the Aeronautical Training Society," wrote Faherty, a former history professor at St. Louis University.

In 1946, SLU conferred on Parks an honorary doctorate in science for his contribution to the field of aviation. The same year, he gave Parks Air College to the university.

The name later was changed to Parks College. The Cahokia campus closed recently, and its programs were moved to the main SLU campus.