Family
Cunningham was born in Los Angeles to Randall and Lela Cunningham, who both moved there from Pennsylvania during the Depression. His father was a truck driver for Union Oil at the time. Around 1945, the family moved to Fresno, California, where Cunningham's father purchased a gas station. In 1953 they moved again, this time to rural Shelbina, Missouri, where his parents purchased and managed the Cunningham Variety Store, a five-and-dime. In Shelbina, Cunningham relished the times he spent hunting pheasant and deer with his father.
Cunningham married his first wife, the former Susan Albrecht, in 1965; they met in college and had one adopted son, Todd. Susan filed for divorce and a restraining order in January 1973, based on her claims of emotional abuse, and the divorce was granted nine months later. Cunningham later stated that in that year, his life hit "rock-bottom."
In 1973, he met Dan McKinnon, a publisher and son of former Congressman Clinton D. McKinnon. Dan McKinnon encouraged him to turn his life around, and Cunningham became a born-again Christian.
Cunningham met his second wife, Nancy D. Jones, at the Miramar Officers' Club in San Diego and they were married February 16, 1974. Nancy was born in 1952 and is also previously married. In 1976, she filed for divorce and a restraining order, stating that he "is a very aggressive spontaneously assaultive person, and I fear for my immediate physical safety and well being." Nancy later had a change of heart, so at her request, the court dismissed the divorce in January 1977. Nancy's declaration justifying the restraining order has been sealed by court order since 1990, when Duke first ran for congress. They have two daughters, April and Carrie. Dr. Nancy Cunningham is an educator for the Encinitas school district.
Read more about this topic: Duke Cunningham
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“In the capsule biography by which most of the people knew one another, I was understood to be an Air Force pilot whose family was wealthy and lived in the East, and I even added the detail that I had a broken marriage and drank to get over it.... I sometimes believed what I said and tried to take the cure in the very real sun of Desert D’Or with its cactus, its mountain, and the bright green foliage of its love and its money.”
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—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
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—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)