Dear Editor:
I met Glenn Cunningham about four years ago, and I’m still trying to understand the foundation of our friendship.
Glenn was born a generation before our country’s civil rights movement and was a career law enforcer despite the injustices he suffered and witnessed. I was born in the sixties and became an educator. Where’s the common ground?
I suppose our friendship evolved around our attempts to use our God given talents to improve our community and to leave the world a better place than when we came into it. As challenging and undefined an ideal this may seem and given our diverse backgrounds, the times we spent together were never awkward or burdensome. Glenn was welcoming, warm and merry.
The greatest thing I observed about Glenn was his ability to bridge the gap between the spiritual and material, the political and the religious. Glenn saw reality as a whole, and he felt that it should not be divided up into compartments. For example, through his efforts fair market, moderate and affordable housing units are being built throughout our city; on September 11, 2001 after the tragedy, he met with the Muslim community to assure them their, like everybody else’s, rights would be protected; law enforcement efforts are being felt in some of our most challenging areas, yet second chance opportunities are given to those who have made mistakes. Glenn loved people on the whole, and it was the whole person about whom Glenn cared.
Maybe the reason Glenn gave up a better paying, less stressful, and possibly more prestigious position from the U.S. Marshall Service to become our Mayor as well as State Senator was that he had found the ideal place for him to integrate his life of prayer with his dedication to duty.
Sempre Fidelis (always faithful). Marine. Police Officer. Public Safety Director. Councilman. Council President. Freeholder. U.S. Marshall. Mayor. State Senator. Thank you, Glenn.
Brother. Friend. Colleague. I will miss you, but never forget you! Rest in peace.
Steve Lipski
Councilman, Ward C