The legend of Glenn Cunningham
By TOM ISERN
© Plains Folk
It's a story I first heard in the old one-room school in Barton County, told as both a cautionary tale and a moral lesson. Now I read the original, as published in the Hugoton Hermes, Feb. 16, 1917.
"Last Friday morning the Sunflower schoolhouse in the southwest part of the county (Stevens) was burned and two boys received very severe burns. Floyd and Glenn Cunningham, age thirteen and seven years respectively, with two other children, arrived a little before the teacher, Jesse W. Reeve, and undertook to build up the fire.
"Mistaking it for kerosene, they put some gasoline in the stove and an explosion followed, the burning gasoline from the burst can striking them on the lower part of the body and the legs; they at once ran to their home two miles away but the saturated clothing continued on fire and the burns were deep.
"The teacher had arrived in sight of the building and he made all speed possible to get there and put out the fire, with the assistance of a man who arrived on horseback; they thought they had it extinguished when another man arrived and said the roof was on fire, so they at once removed everything loose but could do nothing more to save the house.
"There was $500 insurance on the house which was about ten years old, but the keeping of gasoline there may invalidate the insurance; it was in a five gallon can to use in the lamps; only about a gallon remained, however."
Do you notice the practical bent of the latter part of that story? The final concern is with the terms of the insurance contract on the schoolhouse. Of course, the reporter had no way of knowing that it was the younger boy of the incident, Glenn Cunningham, who would figure largely in history. The brother, Floyd would die from his burns. Glenn, while horribly scarred, would survive to become the most famous track star of his era.
The biographies, textbooks, and legends sometimes scramble the details, but they all agree: little Glenn was not supposed to be able to walk again, let alone run. The boy heard the country doctor tell his mother.
She had hope, though, and massaged his legs faithfully. One day Glenn tumbled himself out of his wheelchair and began to crawl. After that he walked, and then he ran, and then he ran everywhere just for the joy of it. The story mixes equal parts of maternal devotion, personal grit, and divine intervention. It's a perfect story.
When Time magazine in 1938, reported Cunningham's breaking of the record for the mile — running it in 4:06.4, paced by a tag-team of runners on the board track at Dartmouth — - it described him as machine-like. With his "barrel chest" and his "piston-like legs," Cunningham was portrayed as a "superman" who amazed all with his consistent performance. As we tell the story in Kansas, though, the emphasis always is on the human, the vulnerable, even the spiritual. This is the record that never could be erased by another runner.
