Major Albert Bond Lambert
1875–1946
Pilot
Albert Bond Lambert was a moving spirit of early aviation and former president of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners. Shortly after graduation from the University of Virginia, he went to Paris on business for the Lambert Pharmaceutical Co. There he learned to fly a balloon. In 1907, St. Louis was host to the first International Air Race in the country, held in Forest Park near Barnes Hospital.
In 1909, he bought a plane from the Wright brothers and Orville Wright taught him to fly. He participated in his first air race in 1910. In 1923, an unknown flyer, Charles A. Lindbergh, landed in a newly cleared corn field near Bridgeton, Missouri. The corn field had been leased by Lambert for use as a flying field and later became Lambert-St. Louis Airport. Lambert was one of Lindbergh’s backers on his flight across the Atlantic in 1927.
