Cunningham, Glenn V.
Track and field
b. Aug. 4, 1909, Atlanta, KS
d. March 10, 1988
When he was six, Glenn and his older brother Floyd had the chore of starting a fire in the schoolhouse stove every cold morning. One February morning in 1916, the kerosene container had accidentally been filled with gasoline. The stove exploded. Floyd was killed and Glenn's legs were so badly burned it was feared he would never walk again.
After several weeks in bed, he was able to walk on crutches. Finally, he got rid of the crutches but, as he said later, "It hurt like thunder to walk, but it didn't hurt at all when I ran. So for five or six years, about all I did was run."
Cunningham became a miler in high school and set an interscholastic record of 4:24.7 in his last race. He entered the University of Kansas in 1931 and won the NCAA 1,500-meter championships in 1932.
He was given the Sullivan Award as the nation's outstanding amateur athlete in 1933, when he won the NCAA mile, the AAU 800- and 1,500-meter runs, and set a world record of 4:06.7 for the mile in the Princeton Invitational Meet.
The AAU 1,500-meter champion from 1935 through 1938, Cunningham finished fourth in the 1932 Olympic event. In 1936, he put on a burst of speed in the third lap to try to break away from the field, but took a silver medal behind New Zealand's Jack Lovelock, who ran a world record 3:47.8.
In 1938, Dartmouth University invited Cunningham to try for a world record on a new, high-banked indoor track. Paced by six Dartmouth runners, he turned in an incredible 4:04.4, which would have been the indoor world record until 1955. However, the mark wasn't recognized because it wasn't run in sanctioned competition.
Because of circulation problems caused by his childhood accident, Cunningham needed nearly an hour to prepare for a race. He first had to massage his legs and he then required a long warmup period. Despite the fact that smoke bothered him, he turned in outstanding performances at Madison Square Garden, where he won 22 indoor miles.
Cunningham, who had a master's degree from the University of Iowa and a doctorate from New York University, retired from competition in 1940 and for four years was director of physical education at Cornell College in Iowa.
After spending two years in the Navy, Cunningham and his wife opened the Glenn Cunningham Youth Ranch in Kansas, where they helped to raise about 10,000 underprivileged children. A lay preacher, Cunningham periodically went on lecture tours to raise money for the ranch.