By Glenn Cunningham, by Cindy Cunningham, Edited by Robert B. Gregg, May of 2025
This is the true story of Glenn Cunningham, born in 1909, suffered severe burns in a schoolhouse fire in Kansas at the age of 7, doctors thought he would never walk again. It was almost a year before he walked. But once it was clear he would walk again, his Dad made him do things like hunt rabbits and walk miles, and he not only walked, he ran! He was a tough little boy. He stood up to a bully in school and the bully never bothered anyone again. He was on the high school track team. He had a good coach who taught him how to run. He went on to college – paid his own way rather than take a scholarship, and went on to win the silver medal in the 1936 Olympics in Germany. He had some trouble running sometimes because his legs would all of the sudden be in excruciating pain again. A really good dentist found out that his teeth were rotting – there was so much infection from when he was young and he got hit in the mouth with a baseball – loosened about 8 teeth but they never fell out. But years later, they were infected and the pain of that infection would cause his legs to hurt so badly when he ran sometimes. This was intermittent. He would probably have had more record-breaking runs if those teeth had been taken care of earlier.
He was born in 1909 and lived until 1988. He was an amazing man. This is Danette’s book and I read it while in Alaska, September 2026. Wayne read it while we were in Alaska in July 2026 and said it was good – that this man overcame unbelievable injuries to became a record-breaking runner.
This is how the fire started in the one-room schoolhouse: The kids would show up to school before the teacher sometimes. To get the fire started to heat the room, they would throw kerosene on it, but a women’s group the night before had used gasoline. So the gasoline exploded. The fire burned his brother so badly that he died a week later of his injuries. His brother’s shoes were placed outside on a wood sled and the next morning the sled was burned to ash, his shoes were so hot. Glenn was also burned so badly – legs and face and everything. But with days, weeks, months of care, he eventually recovered. What an inspiring story.
Here’s the last 2 pages of the book:
