The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Lodwick Aviation Military Academy, Avon Park

Avon Park had two wartime flying operations, not one. The bombing range and the Army airfield east of town are the well-known half. The other half was a civilian-run primary flying school inside the town itself, at the municipal airport, quartered in the resort hotels the boom had left behind.

How it came here

General Henry “Hap” Arnold’s Army Air Corps handed primary pilot training to civilian contractors so that Air Corps instructors could concentrate on the later stages. The town fathers of Avon Park went after one of those schools, and got it: negotiations with Albert Lodwick, co-owner of the Lakeland School of Aeronautics, produced the Lodwick Aviation Military Academy at the Avon Park Municipal Airport, opening in October 1941 — two months before Pearl Harbor.[mfh-lodwick]

In Army terms the school was the 61st Army Air Forces Flying Training Detachment, the designation under which its cadets are commemorated.[mfh-lodwick]

What it used

The school had no purpose-built campus. It was assembled out of what Avon Park already had:

  • the former Highlands Lakes Hotel, converted to barracks;
  • a former golf course;
  • an old casino;
  • several other former resort structures; and
  • the municipal airport, with fifty Stearman PT-17 trainers.[mfh-lodwick]

Because the buildings were scattered, cadets had to be bussed between barracks and airfield. The compensation was that the remodeled hotel gave recruits “accommodations more luxurious than most other Army installations.”[mfh-lodwick]

The boom-time hotels that had stood half-empty since 1926 turned out, fifteen years later, to be the town’s war asset.

The Hotel Jacaranda and the Cadet Club

The Hotel Jacaranda reserved a room as a Cadet Club. Membership cost each cadet one dollar a month, and the club gave a dance for the first graduating class on 6 December 1941 — the last Saturday before the United States was at war.[mfh-lodwick]

Scale, and what it did to the town

During its three years of operation, more than 5,000 flight cadets entered the academy and 3,413 graduated, achieving an overall completion rate of approximately 68 percent.[lpl-cadet-publications][mfh-lodwick] The ~32 percent attrition rate reflected standard wartime USAAF primary flight training wash-out rates, which eliminated candidates prior to basic and advanced flight schools. At peak operations, the civilian school employed more than 300 civilians in roles including flight instructors, mechanics, dispatchers, parachute riggers, and kitchen staff.[avon-park-city] Due to severe wartime labor shortages, women filled many of these essential support and maintenance positions.[avon-park-city]

Because LAMA was a civilian-operated contract school, the primary flight instructors were themselves civilians. To protect these essential personnel from the wartime draft, many were enlisted into the Army as privates in the Army Reserve while continuing their teaching duties under military supervision.[mac-lodwick]

Those civilian employees are the part of the story that is usually left out. The state’s own account says that “severe housing shortages, particularly for civilian employees, contributed to problematic turnovers at both LAMA and Avon Park Army Air Field” — that is, the town could not house the people the war work brought, and they kept leaving.[mfh-lodwick] To mitigate the crisis, Albert Lodwick adapted existing structures—including the former Highland Lakes Hotel, a golf course, and other resort buildings—to serve as barracks and administrative offices.[mfh-lodwick] The Army airfield east of town had the same problem on a larger scale: a military population that peaked at 10,000 against a town of 3,000, with personnel billeted as far away as Lake Wales and Wauchula.[mfh-airfield]

Closure

The academy’s phase-out unfolded across three distinct operational milestones in autumn 1944:

  1. 16 October 1944: Headquarters Army Air Forces Training Command officially inactivated the military flying training detachment (61st AAFFTD).[manning-2005]
  2. End of October 1944: Flight instruction ceased upon the graduation of final cadet class 45-A, concluding active flying operations at the municipal airport.[lpl-cadet-publications]
  3. 6 November 1944: The War Department and Lodwick concluded formal administrative closeout and contract termination.[mfh-lodwick]

“The economic loss to Avon Park was dramatic.”[mfh-lodwick] At the end of the war the field reverted to the city and went back to being the Avon Park Municipal Airport.

Civilian administration

While Albert I. Lodwick served as general contractor and president from his Lakeland headquarters, day-to-day civilian operations at Avon Park were led by resident directors:

  • Robert H. Austin served as the inaugural Resident Director during initial school setup in autumn 1941.[lpl-cadet-publications]
  • F. W. Spatz served as Resident Civilian Director beginning in 1942, working alongside Richard G. Beeler (Director of Flying), W. Calvin Pidgeon (Director of Academics), and G. P. Emerson (Director of Maintenance).[lama-1942] Popular postwar accounts frequently identified him as the “brother of General Carl Spaatz,” commander of the Strategic Air Forces. However, vital statistics and family records confirm that General Carl Andrew Spaatz (born Spatz) had only one sibling, an older sister named Flora (1889–1971), disproving the fraternal relationship.

What is commemorated, and where

In February 1995 the Air Force Association placed plaques at three places in Avon Park to honor the men of the 61st AAFFTD:[mfh-lodwick]

  • the Hotel Jacaranda;
  • the Avon Park Municipal Airport; and
  • the grounds of the former Walker Memorial Hospital — which the state’s account identifies as the Highlands Lakes Hotel and Casino, the buildings the school had used as barracks.

The placement of these memorials is corroborated by multiple state historical accounts, with the Florida World War II Heritage Trail specifically highlighting the dedication at the municipal airport.[fl-wwii-heritage-trail] However, whether these three plaques remain in place today is an open question requiring on-the-ground confirmation.

That last identification matters for this project independently: it ties the Highlands Lake Hotel, named as a landmark in the 1941 state road act, to the later Walker Memorial Hospital site.

Cadet publications and photographs

The academy did publish its own cadet annuals, and they survive. The Lakeland Public Library’s collection of Lodwick cadet publications holds the “1941 LAMA” — the first issue, “the equivalent of an annual or yearbook,” produced by cadet classes 42-D and 42-E, its cover picturing the former Highland Lakes Resort Hotel that served as the barracks, with articles, cartoons, photographs and a membership roll of both classes — and a “1942 LAMA” and “1943 LAMA” with class photographs and civilian personnel rosters.[lpl-cadet-publications][lama-1942]

Records of the civilian workforce. While general histories rarely list individual dispatchers or riggers, surviving records of the civilian staff—alongside cadet publications like the yearbook Propwash and the student newspaper Solo Land—are preserved in the Albert Lodwick Papers (Record Group 2700) at the Lakeland Public Library’s Special Collections.[lpl-lodwick-papers] Additionally, Florida Memory holds a World War II health document, “Help Beat the Axis with Prophylaxis,” which references a civilian “Dispensary, AAFFTD, Lodwick Inn (W)” operating in Avon Park.[florida-memory-prophylaxis]

The same library’s Albert Lodwick photograph collection has over four hundred Avon Park items, among them flight instructor Richard G. Beeler photographed congratulating cadet B. K. Yount; a group portrait of the academy’s staff; the Highland Lakes Hotel barracks on Lake Lillian; an annual field day of 1943 with swimming and softball; a cadet dance of 1944; graduation ceremonies; and an aerial view of Ace Wright Field, “an auxiliary field for cadets at the Lodwick Aviation Military Academy” — an auxiliary field site.[lpl-lodwick-photos] The photographs are marked “Copyright Undetermined” and are not copied here.

Reconciling historical discrepancies in cadet counts. Earlier accounts cited varying totals: the state’s verified 3,413 graduates; a 1989 essay citing the 61st AAFFTD unit history with “more than 2,800 cadets” through mid-1943; and occasional references to “over five thousand.”[sage-gagne-1989][ucf-vlp-billington] The archival records show that “over 5,000” reflects total cadet matriculation/intake at Avon Park, while 3,413 was the final graduate count (distinct from Lodwick’s Lakeland school, which matriculated over 8,000 and graduated over 6,000).

Official military records for the school, including the 61st Flight Training Detachment history, the unpublished study “Pilots in the Sun,” and USAAF accident reports documenting flight safety and cadet training fatalities, are preserved in the collections of the Air Force Historical Research Agency.[afhra-index]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Museum of Florida History, Florida Department of State, Lodwick Aviation Military Academy — Avon Park Municipal Airport, World War II Historical Sites, Central Listing (2026)
  2. Waneta Sage-Gagne, Training Army Pilots in Lakeland and Avon Park during World War II: A Photographic Essay — Tampa Bay History 11(2), 1989 (1989)
  3. Lakeland Public Library Digital Special Collections, Lodwick School of Aeronautics Cadet Publications: the 1941 LAMA and 1943 LAMA cadet annuals of the Avon Park school (2026)
  4. Lakeland Public Library Digital Special Collections, Albert Lodwick Photo Collection: Avon Park items, including flight instructor Richard G. Beeler, the staff group, the Highland Lakes Hotel barracks, Ace Wright Field, the 1943 field day and the 1944 cadet dance (2026)
  5. Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Air Force History Index: 61st Flight Training Detachment history (IRISNUM 150464); 'Pilots in the Sun' (1105839); Avon Park Army Air Field history vol. 1 (169437); Air Force Safety Agency accident microfilm reels (2026)
  6. University of Central Florida, Veterans Legacy Program, Veterans Legacy Program biography of James Lynn Billington, who trained with the 61st Flying Training Detachment at Avon Park (2026)
  7. Army and Navy Publishing Company, 1942 Army Air Forces Southeast Training Center, 61st AAFFTD, Lodwick Aviation Military Academy: Classes 43-B and 43-C (1942) · book
  8. Thomas A. Manning, Office of History and Research, Headquarters, AETC, History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942–2002 (2005) · official
  9. Museum of Florida History, Florida Department of State, Avon Park Army Airfield — Avon Park Air Force Range, World War II Historical Sites, Central Listing (2026)
  10. City of Avon Park, Avon Park Official City site & AOPA (2026)
  11. Military Aviation Chronicles, Military Aviation Chronicles & Museum of Florida History (2026)
  12. Lakeland Public Library Special Collections, Albert Lodwick Papers (Record Group 2700) (2026)
  13. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, Help Beat the Axis with Prophylaxis (2026)
  14. Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, Florida World War II Heritage Trail (2026) · official

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