He was educated in the San Bernardino and Riverside public schools and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1910.

As such, he accomplished tasks like arranging for the Grizzlies, as the athletics teams were known, to play against the Oregon State Aggies in the basketball pavilion at the University of Southern California and with Occidental College in the Olympic Auditorium.

[4] He was credited with bringing William H. Spaulding to the campus as a football coach and starting improvements that landed the university in the Pacific Coast Conference.

[1] In 1931 a move began at UCLA to bring in a manager who had actually graduated from the Los Angeles campus, with tennis coach William C. Ackerman as the favorite.

Cunningham was offered a one-year extension on his contract, but a student protest resulted in the term being extended to two years, with Ackerman to take over at the end of that time.

[5] In one of his final acts as graduate manager, Cunningham told a City Council session in December 1932 that UCLA would not approve a council decision to give the University of Southern California Trojans eight preferred dates at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the succeeding ten years while the UCLA Bruins were to receive only five.

In 1933, Los Angeles City Council District 3 was bounded on the south by Pico Boulevard, east by Highland Avenue, north by Hollywood Hills, extending west to the ocean and Santa Monica Canyon.

[9] Cunningham had one time made repeated efforts to rid Westwood Village, just south of the UCLA campus, of bookmakers who were doing business with university students.

[2] In 1948 he was on a Los Angeles committee against "featherbedding" in the railroad industry, a practice requiring extra employees on freight trains.