Members' 25-Year Reminiscences

Wayne P. Grinnell, AICP
Las Cruces, New Mexico

Regarding Jonathan Ray Cunningham, AICP (and AIP and ASPO), one of the hard workers who helped establish APA.

I am gathering information regarding his career, and would like to hear from his friends and contemporaries. He was my father-in-law, and unfortunately died at 67, in 1980. He was a contemporary and friend of Simon Eisner (who very kindly signed a first edition of The Urban Pattern to Jon) and many others.

Jon was involved in establishing one of the first (if not the first) councils of government, in the Olympia/Puget Sound region, over 50 years ago. He worked in Spokane and Walla Walla, Washington, before coming to El Paso, Texas, to be near his parents and to be El Paso's first Director of Planning (1958-1978). Besides writing ("Planning the Small City" etc.) and teaching, he trained future planning directors (Mike Gunning at Corpus Christi, Emil Moncivais at San Antonio, Judy Price at Dona Ana County, New Mexico [her widower, Tom, established an APA scholarship in her memory], and me, also in New Mexico.

More, later.