Husky Oliver Lafayette Parks, onetime crack Chevrolet salesman, got the flying bug in 1926. He took ten hours of flight instruction, started his own school the next year at St. Louis Municipal Airport with himself as the entire faculty. A few weeks later he cracked up, lost his left eye and ended his flying instructor's career.
But Lafe Parks stuck to his school, hobbling out from the hospital on crutches to quell a mutiny of the dozen students, who wanted their money back. Persuasive Parks, a better talker than he had been a pilot, talked them out of it.
Then he talked a...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
