Rev. Samuel Willard CUNNINGHAM

CUNNINGHAM, LEEHMAN, ASTOR

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 5/10/2009 at 10:13:59

Daily Freeman Journal, Webster City, Iowa
July 30, 2007

Rev. S. Willard Cunningham, 90, Webster City, died Saturday, July 28, 2007 at Trinity Regional Hospital in Fort Dodge. Funeral services will be 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Asbury United Methodist Church, Webster City, with Rev. Gordon Watson officiating. Visitation will be at the Foster Funeral and Cremation Center from 6-8 p.m. Monday. and two hours prior to the service Tuesday at the church. Masonic funeral rites will be held at 7 p.m. Monday at the funeral home. Graveside services will be in the Sioux City Memorial Park Cemetery at 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

Samuel Willard Cunningham, son of Logan and Ada Jane Leehman Cunningham, was born Oct. 25, 1916 at Coulterville, Ill. He graduated from Morningside College and then entered the Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., where he completed his Pastoral study. He married Mildred V. Astor at Sioux City. In the late 1940s, he assumed his first Pastoral assignment at the Rowan and Lattimer Methodist Church in Iowa. For nearly the next 33 years, he was pastor at Methodist churches in Garner, IA, Whitfield Methodist, Sioux City, St. Luke’s Methodist in Dubuque, Asbury Methodist in Webster City, and First Methodist in Mason City, where he retired in 1981 and the couple returned to Webster City.

Rev. Cunningham is survived by his wife, Mildred; daughter, Donna Cunningham, St. Paul, Minn.; and grandson, Willard Verburg Cunningham, St. Paul, Minn.; and several cousins, nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by a son Gerald, two sisters and four brothers.