{"id":19104,"date":"2018-06-14T12:35:25","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=19104"},"modified":"2018-06-14T12:35:25","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:35:25","slug":"my-clemson-bennie-lee-cunningham-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/my-clemson-bennie-lee-cunningham-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"My Clemson: Bennie Lee Cunningham Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

\n

“Bennie Cunningham was a man whose priorities were\u00a0family and friendship \u2014 and the line was fuzzy between the two.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

December 23, 1954 \u2013 April 23, 2018<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

He has been called<\/span> the greatest tight end in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The first African-American football player to make an All-America team in school history, he came to Clemson in 1972 and played on the football team from 1972 to 1975. He was a first-round draft choice of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1976, and he played for that team until 1985, bringing home two Super Bowl rings. He was one of the greats of college and professional football. Yet, while his fame may have come from his prowess on the football field, his legacy was the many lives he touched and changed in those years and the years since.<\/p>\n

Bennie Cunningham passed away on April 23, 2018, at the age of 63 after a battle with cancer.<\/p>\n

When Cunningham retired from the Steelers, he returned to the classroom, first to finish his bachelor\u2019s degree and then to earn a master\u2019s degree in secondary education. He went on to a long career as a guidance counselor at West Oak High School in Westminster, where he shared his wisdom and direction with thousands of students over the years.<\/p>\n

At his funeral at Seneca Baptist Church, filled to capacity with family, former teammates, professional colleagues and friends, the stories made it clear that Bennie Cunningham was a man whose priorities were family and friendship \u2014 and the line was fuzzy between the two. Friends became family.<\/p>\n

Cunningham\u2019s son, Bennie Cunningham III \u201910, talked about his father’s legacy at Clemson, in Pittsburgh, and with his family: \u201cMy father planted trees that he may never have enjoyed the fruit from, and I think that\u2019s our purpose: planting trees we may not enjoy the fruit of.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a student at Clemson, Cunningham won the Frank Howard Award, presented to an athlete each year for \u201cbringing honor to Clemson.\u201d He continued throughout his life to bring honor to Clemson. Coach Dabo Swinney called him \u201cone of our greatest players, arguably the greatest tight end in our history and ACC history.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Swinney went on to say that \u201cmore importantly was the way he represented Clemson as a professional athlete and in his life after football.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are grateful for the life of Bennie Cunningham, and grateful that this was his Clemson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bennie Cunningham was one of the greats of college and professional football. Yet, while his fame may have come from his prowess on the football field, his legacy was the many lives he touched and changed in those years and the years since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[350,1282,1573,2770,2772,2779],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-clemson","tag-bennie-cunningham","tag-football","tag-in-memoriam","tag-summer-2018","tag-summer-2018-alumni-profiles","tag-summer-2018-my-clemson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/06\/B-Cunningham.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19104"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}