Albert Bond Lambert built a flying field on leased farmland, let any pilot use it free, and pledged the first $1,000 toward a young airmail pilot's plan to fly to Paris.
A Pirep featured story · KSTL Lambert-St. Louis International, St. Louis, MO
Albert Bond Lambert was a Listerine heir who made the mouthwash money work overtime. His father founded Lambert Pharmacal; Albert left college at twenty to run it and served as president from 1896 to 1923, watching the fortune soar after his marketers rebranded bad breath as "halitosis." He played Olympic golf in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904. He bought an airplane from the Wright brothers in 1909, learned to fly under Orville's instruction, and in 1911 became the first St. Louis resident to hold a pilot's license. In World War I he organized and financed a balloon training school that the Army folded into the Signal Corps, commissioning him a major to run it; the rank stuck to his name for life.
In 1920 Lambert leased 170 acres of farmland northwest of the city and graded a flying field on it at his own expense. Then he did the unexpected thing: he opened it free to any pilot who wanted to fly. The Robertson brothers, both wartime aviators, based their aircraft company there. The Missouri National Guard stood up an observation squadron. In 1923 Lambert paid to bring the International Air Races to the field, and the field started carrying his name. In 1925 he bought the ground outright for $68,000.
A 21-year-old pilot turned up for the 1923 races and stayed on as a flight instructor: Charles Lindbergh. The Robertsons hired him in 1925 as chief pilot to lay out their St. Louis to Chicago airmail route, and from April 1926 he flew it in open-cockpit DH-4s, alone, at night, in Midwest weather. Somewhere over Illinois that fall he started thinking about the Atlantic.
When Lindbergh went looking for backers, Lambert pledged the first $1,000 and lent the search his name; eight more St. Louis businessmen followed, Albert's own son among them. The backers called themselves the Spirit of St. Louis Organization, and Lindbergh named the airplane for them. On May 21, 1927 the Spirit of St. Louis landed at Le Bourget after 33 hours and 30 minutes alone over the ocean.
In 1928, after voters passed a bond issue, Lambert sold the field he had bankrolled for eight years to the City of St. Louis for $68,000, exactly what he had paid for the ground; the hangars, grading, and terminal he had added came free. The airplane carries the city's name and the airport carries his, and both trace to the same habit: a mouthwash heir who kept paying aviation's bills before anyone else believed.