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Sally Cunningham, attorney at law
In 2008 the United States has a black woman as Secretary of State, one of the highest offices in the land. There is a chance that our next president will be a woman.
No longer is it unusual to see women business owners, entrepreneurs, and politicians in our country. But looking back over the past 50 years -- the length of our stay in McCook, it seems quite remarkable that things have changed so much. And, though it is not much spoken of these days, one of the leaders of the Women's Movement on the National stage 40 and 50 years ago, was a McCook woman, Sally Cunningham.
Sara Jane Cunningham was born in Des Moines, Iowa, where her father was an attorney, a state senator, and a U.S. Congressman. She took her college work at Sterling College in Kansas. She came to McCook in 1946 to take a job as a PE teacher in the McCook High School.
From her earliest days in McCook, Sally, as she was known locally, was not content to just teach school. She became active in the Congregational Church, and started her own businesses -- a gift shop in downtown McCook, and served as the owner/manager of The McCook Business Service. She also became an active member of the McCook Chapter of Business and Professional Women -- BPW.
Over time, Sally became a friend of the International President of BPW, and one year she persuaded that lady to visit McCook to speak at a regional meeting. In turn the International President persuaded Sally to give up the teaching profession and return to college to pursue a law degree.
She did this, and upon obtaining a law degree from the University of Nebraska Law School, she returned to McCook and opened her own law practice in 1959. At various times other attorneys were associated with her in her law practice: Cloyd Clark, John Battershell, Frank Shoemaker, Stan Goodwin, and Dave Bergin. She served a term as the President of the 14th Judicial District Bar.
The years Sally spent in McCook were busy ones. It took a bit of time to build up her successful law practice, but she never stopped her involvement in the BPW. Over the years she became a spokesperson on women's issues, locally, on the state level and finally on the national level.
She was in demand as a speaker to women's groups, and she wrote well thought out opinions for magazines and newspapers, which gained for her a wide following among women. Her article titled, "The Proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Government" was first printed in the Woman's CPA Journal, and then was taken up by the Republican Woman's Newspaper, and was widely reprinted in newspapers across the nation.
In 1963, while Frank Morrison was serving as Nebraska's Governor, he created the Nebraska Commission on the Status of Women and named Sally Cunningham the first Chairman of that group.
In 1964 Sally was named "Woman of Achievement" by the Nebraska Federation of Business and Professional Women. In 1966 the California BPW awarded her the same honor. She was included in the 1967 edition of "Outstanding Civic Leaders in America."
In 1966, Ms. Cunningham was rewarded for her many years work on behalf of the BPW, by being elected President of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Inc. It was during her tenure as President of the National BPW that the "Equal Pay Act" was made into law. Her notable work in the BPW led to her being named, in 1969, to "The Citizen's Advisory Council on the Status of Women" by President Nixon. Sally continued to work on various committees and foundations connected to Women's Groups up to the time of her death.
Throughout her years in McCook, Sally dealt in real estate, and actively bought and sold apartment buildings and business properties, and single unit homes. She was also something of an innovator.
When she built her home, north of Kelley Park, her lot was on a hill, which necessitated a steep driveway into her garage. Anticipating that ice would be a problem in the wintertime, she installed electric wires in the concrete so that she could keep the driveway free of ice, using the same principles as are used in an electric blanket.
Sally Cunningham was a complex personality. She was diligent in her business dealings. From personal experience I can attest that on one hand, she was a hard bargainer, but at the same time she was scrupulously fair and above board in her business transactions. I doubt that she was a happy person. She was intense -- almost driven, in her work for the rights of women, to the point that many did not understand her, some made fun of her, and some did not like her at all.
One consequence was that her appointment as a District Judge, which officials in Lincoln accepted as a given because of her work with the National BPW, was sidetracked by the local Bar Association, which failed to submit her name for consideration by Governor Morrison.
One of the steps toward equality, which Sally Cunningham worked on diligently in McCook, was the integration of women into the Rotary Club. She had let it be known repeatedly (before Rotary International accepted women into the organization in 1982) that she would like to be a member of the McCook Rotary Club. Each time her application was rebuffed -- sometimes with rather lame attempts at humor, such as the time that Emmett Jones, a District Governor of Rotary, greeted Sally's application into Rotary by making his own application for membership into the local chapter of the Business and Professional Women's group. Both applications were denied.
In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court gave Rotary International a nudge to accept women members into their organization. Presumably the BPW also changed their membership requirements at that same time.
Sally retired to her home in Sun City, Ariz., in 1984. While on a European holiday she passed away, on July 17, 1988. Funeral services were held in a Sun City Congregational Church and she is buried in an Arizona cemetery. She was 66 years old.
It is unfortunate that Sally did not live to see the adoption of many of the principles for which she worked during her lifetime. At the time they were considered quite controversial, but are now the law of the land, and accepted as commonplace. She could take justified pride in the work she did toward those accomplishments. I believe her comment would be, "Well, it's about time!"