Claude Carroll Cunningham was born on July 5, 1883, to John Sylvester and Genevieve Whitney Cunningham of Riley County, Kansas.  He was one of seven children born to the family, who moved to Manhattan, Kansas in 1898.

Claude did not attend high school. He entered Kansas State Agricultural College directly from the local Riley county district school in 1898.  Graduating in 1903 with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture, he also lettered in both varsity football and baseball.  He went on to do post-graduate study in agriculture at Kansas State in 1904 and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1906.

Cunningham married twice.  In April of 1909, he married May Griffing, with whom he had one daughter, Carol May. His first wife died in 1912.  In May of 1920, he remarried, to Myrtel Johnson of El Dorado, Kansas.  Two sons were born to them, James S. and Robert Bruce.

In El Dorado, Myrtel Cunningham, herself a graduate of Kansas State Agricultural College, was active in Extension and 4-H work, and the International Farm Youth Exchange.  She helped establish the Butler County Historical Museum and the El Dorado chapter of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).  In 1947, she served as chosen delegate to the fifth triennial congress of the

Associated County Women of the World held at Amsterdam, Holland.  Upon her return from this trip, she spoke to many area groups on the event. She kept quite a large herb garden, with about sixty varieties, as well as prize roses.

Sons James S. and his family lived on a farm near El Dorado. Robert Bruce and his family lived at Trinoka Farms, where he was associated with his father in the production of certified seed and hybrid seed corn.

Modest and self-effacing, Claude Cunningham personified the rare man who cared more for attainment of an objective and an ideal than for personal gain.  But his achievements spoke for themselves, gaining an impressive stature in Kansas agricultural circles, though many of his neighbors in Butler County were perhaps unaware of his lofty standing and regard among the agricultural elect.

Both a student and a teacher, as a young man he headed the experiment station at Hays and later taught for nine years at Kansas State College.

Though his work at the college was of high order, he wanted to get into actual farming for himself, testing his theories in actual practice.  So he voluntarily retired from teaching and entered upon the true mission of his life with a farm in Lincoln Township, on Rural Route Four, five miles north of El Dorado on Highway 77.

Upon his retirement from teaching, W. M. Jardine, at that time president of the college and later U. S. secretary of agriculture, said that Cunningham had “the rare combination of technical training and everyday judgment, and unusual ability to supply practical information based on scientific data. . . . His work has shown such aptitude and persistence that his knowledge of Kansas crops and the conditions influencing their production is unrivaled.”

A member of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture for eight years, Cunningham served as its president in 1941.  He was member and chairman of the Kansas association of soil conservation districts, one of the organizers of the Butler county district, and its first president.  For one term, he served as a member of the Kansas legislature, from 1933 to 1934.  He was a member of the Elcoln school board for 18 years.

A member of First Methodist Church in El Dorado, he had also served as Sunday School superintendent at Hays, Manhattan and Elcoln.  For eighteen years he was on the local school district board. Cunningham was a member of El Dorado Kiwanis club since 1922, serving as treasurer five years.

One of his most striking services was as a member Kansas Crop Improvement Association board of directors for 56 years, eight terms of which were as president.  He was also director of the State Board of Agriculture council on Research and Education since 1951.

Having suffered a previous heart attack twenty years earlier, Cunningham died Feb. 12, 1959, at the age of 75.  He was fatally stricken with a second heart attack while attending the National Farm Loan association district meeting, dying in the presence of his family and friends, and in the service of a group that was representative of the many farm organizations he had served so long and so well.

No man was more highly regarded for his personal attributes of character than Claude Cunningham, whose instant death dealt a shocking blow to his community.