William Joseph Cunningham

William Joseph Cunningham completed his lifelong service to God and humanity March 16 at the age of 92. He had been battling cancer and his death occurred just a few hours after he attended the funeral of his beloved wife, Patricia.

He was, above all, a man of peace who built his diplomatic and educational careers upon the principles of human understanding and cooperation between people of different cultures, especially people in the East Asian nations of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Cambodia where he served during his 32 years with the U. S. Department of State. His keen foresight led to his greatest achievement: a firmly positive response to a 1971 invitation from the People’s Republic of China to an American table tennis team for an exhibition match, an event later referred to as “Ping Pong Diplomacy”, which led to the historic establishment of diplomatic relations between that nation and the United States.

Following his retirement from the Department of State in 1982, his energies were focused upon teaching his firmly held principles in Houston during his 11-year leadership of the Center for International Studies at the University of St. Thomas and his extensive participation in the city’s numerous international organizations over the final 35 years of his life.

Bill was born in Santa Monica, California, the oldest son of Dr. and Mrs. William C. Cunningham. The family soon moved to a small alfalfa farm east of Lancaster, California where he grew up. While at Antelope Valley Joint Union High School, his interest in politics, diplomacy and government first became evident when he won admission to the California Boys State session in the summer of 1943. He became student body president the following September.

He graduated early from high school and was sworn into the U.S. Navy in 1943, beginning his military career in the Navy’s V-12 officer training program at Washburn Municipal University in Topeka, Kansas. In October 1944, he transferred to the U.S. Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of New Mexico. As a commissioned naval officer in 1946, he served mainly on sea duty until released from active service. He returned to the University of New Mexico and completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees.

In 1949, Bill began his 32-year diplomatic career in the U.S. Department of State in Prague, former Czechoslovakia, during the early years of the Cold War. He was then assigned to Paris, France, in the spring of 1950. Bill Cunningham wanted to be “where the action was,” and he requested a posting in Seoul, South Korea, arriving just before Thanksgiving at the height of the Korean War. He was suddenly evacuated to Japan when the Chinese communist army invaded the southern tip of the Korean peninsula.

During 1951-52, he served in the American Consulate at Sapporo in Hokkaido, Japan. From 1952-54, he was stationed in the former Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam and from 1954-55, he became Chief of Mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, charged with expanding the diplomatic staff from five members to 95, overseeing construction of a modern building, with electricity and air conditioning – all in one year’s time! Bill called the negotiations for this huge task “the greatest learning experience of my entire career.”

Having mastered the French language during his three years in the former French colonial region of Southeast Asia, Bill set his sights on mastering the Chinese language during his period of service in Washington, DC in the mid-1950s. While there, he met and married Patricia Ann Sloan, who had her own international career in Lima, Peru, and Florence, Italy. She was the love of his life and became the mother of their five children during their 61 year marriage.

A 1957 assignment to study Chinese at the Department of State’s Chinese Language School in Taichung, Taiwan, sent the couple back to East Asia for five years, where Bill gained his official commission as a Foreign Service officer. Following his studies in Taichung, he became director of the school and later gained a position at the American Embassy in Taipei. With a growing family and the fulfillment of his long-held desire for knowledge of the language, culture, and history of China, he counted those years as the happiest of his Foreign Service career.

The next five years in Washington, DC at the China Desk of the Department of State, saw the birth of the Cunninghams’ three youngest children, followed by a year’s sabbatical leave for Bill, which he spent in East Asian studies at Columbia University in New York.

Bill’s final overseas assignment (1968-71) as First Secretary at the American embassy in Tokyo, Japan, brought about the most significant achievement of his Foreign Service career. In April, 1971, when relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China were at their most bitter over the bloody war in Vietnam, he received – and realized the underlying significance of – a message from the captain of the American Table Tennis Team, then competing at an international match in Nagoya, Japan. The People’s Republic of China had invited the Americans to an exhibition match in Beijing.

Bill had carefully read and remembered the intent of an overlooked policy statement issued by the American government the preceding year: cultural and athletic exchanges were exempt from the long-enforced ban on travel by American citizens to the People’s Republic of China. He correctly sensed that the government on mainland China was seeking a way to make peaceful contact with the United States and realized the significance of the opportunity. Foreseeing pitfalls and averting objections to the exchange, he delicately negotiated the matter through governmental bureaucracy and later learned that the administration of President Nixon was also seeking a back-channel way to communicate peacefully with the Chinese.

The exchange gained the famous label, “Ping-Pong Diplomacy,” which later became the title of journalist/author Nicholas Griffin’s book (336pp, Scribner, NY: 2014) recounting the historic event. Bill’s work was also credited in Henry Kissinger’s memoir, White House Years, and Bill personally participated in a 1996 American-Chinese conclave in New York City, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the exchange that led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, easing the hostility between two of the world’s superpowers.

Bill’s last decade with the Department of State was evenly divided between service in Washington and New York, where he became Counselor to the United States Mission to the United Nations. Upon his retirement in 1982, he began his second career in Houston, as director of the recently-established Center for International Studies at the University of St. Thomas. Dr. Ann Tiller, the center’s founding director, had suddenly died the preceding year and Bill faced the multiple tasks of building the fledgling center’s curriculum, student enrollment, faculty, and outreach programs in a new, prosperous city whose leaders had not yet realized it was rapidly becoming a major center of international business, trade, population, cultural, and educational activity. He quickly became acquainted with leading citizens in many of these areas, letting them know the CIS was “open for business”.

Mr. Cunningham was preceded in death by his wife, Patricia; his parents; his infant sister, Anne-Marie Cunningham; and his adult sister, Mary Ann Reilly. He is survived by his brother, Carl Cunningham of Houston, TX, five children: Anne (Ralph) Hedian of Cheverly, MD; Theresa (Padraig) Doolan of Riva, MD; Marie-Claire (Earl Rix) Cunningham of New York, NY; Peggy “Pegeen” Bush of Corinth, TX, and William Joseph (June) Cunningham, Jr. of Millersville, MD; three nieces, a nephew, eleven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Viewing will be from 5-8 p.m. Friday, March 23 at Earthman-Bellaire, 4525 Bissonnet St., Bellaire, TX. Funeral services are scheduled at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 24 in the Chapel of St. Basil on the University of St. Thomas campus, 3800 Montrose Blvd in Houston. He will be interred along with his late wife at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Silver Spring, MD.

Flowers will not be displayed at the viewing or at the funeral. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Catholic Relief Services, or to The University of St. Thomas’ Center for International Studies' Distinguished Diplomat Program, or to The University of St. Thomas’ Ann Q. Tiller Endowed Scholarship in International Studies via www.stthom.edu/give

Donations may be mailed to:

Center for International Studies, c/o Dr. Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas

3800 Montrose Blvd., Houston, TX 77006

Please indicate DDP or Tiller in the memo line.