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ALBERT I. LODWICK PAPERS RG2700
The records in this series document the business activities of the Lodwick School of Aeronautics, a civilian owned flight training school under contract to the army to provide primary flight training for pilots in World War II. A good brief general history of the Lodwick School of Aeronautics and the nearby Lodwick Aviation Military Academy can be found in Wanetta Sage-Gagne's Pilots in the Sun: Primary Pilot Training Schools in Lakeland and Avon Park, Florida, 1940-1945 (Lakeland, FL: Friends of the Library, 1990). Another slim volume by R. G. Beeler entitled The History of Lodwick Aviation Military Academy (Lakeland, FL: Crown Printing, 1991) covers the school in Avon Park in more detail. The Sage-Gagne and Beeler volumes provide a good general overview of the training regimen at the schools, while the records in this series provide a view of the business side of the operation. Lodwick purchased an interest in the Lincoln (NE) Flying School and moved its operations to Lakeland in 1940, renaming it first the Lakeland School of Aeronautics and then the Lodwick School of Aeronautics. He leased the Lakeland Municipal Airport as the home base for the school and opened a second school in 1941 in nearby Avon Park, the Lodwick Aviation Military Academy. Between 1940 and 1945 more than 8,000 trainees entered the Lodwick School of Aeronautics and more than 6,000 graduated. The site of the school is now the spring training home of the Detroit Tigers baseball team. The records in this series include deeds and leases, correspondence, minutes of meetings, auditor's reports, financial statements, and scattered issues of Sololand, the newspaper of the Lodwick School of Aeronautics. The records are arranged alphabetically by subject or type of record and chronologically within folders.
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