The temptation is to assume that Rose Cunningham has stayed so busy during her life — which has spanned 93 years — that she forgot to age.
“Who are you talking to?” she responds with a laugh when asked if it’s time to start winding down her activity level. “You should see my calendar right now. It’s filled up.”
The Pebble Beach great-grandmother just finished her 38th year as a volunteer for the Callaway Pebble Beach Invitational golf tournament, where she is senior marshal — the person in charge of wrangling the entire volunteer staff, feeding everybody, dealing with emergencies, and virtually anything else that needs to be overseen.
The least she could do, it seems, is sleep for a week after the tournament, but that’s not her style, either.
“Are you kidding? I have Thanksgiving at my house the following Thursday,” she says.
she walked the course until 2000 as an official scorer at the old Crosby Clambake, which became the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, cavorting with Telly Savales, Glen Campbell, Harry Crosby, Dan Quayle, Peter Ueberroth and countless others.
she has plenty of stories to tell.
Tommy Smothers gave her an autographed yo-yo. Arnold Palmer locked her in a bear hug, then signed her visor, when he noticed an “Arnie’s Army” pin on her collar. Clint Eastwood approached her as she sat on a bench by the 15th hole, saying, “Let an old man sit down next to you,” then chatted as if they’d known each other for years. Eddie DeBartolo, owner of the San Francisco 49ers at the time, pulled off his windbreaker and gave it to her when he heard she liked it. she recalls finding Phil Harris lounging on a white sofa, by the 17th tee box, sipping champagne, as she approached with the Gatlin Brothers.
her driver’s license is valid until 2013. she passed her most-recent test without using any corrective lenses for the eye exam.
Meeting her husband
she was born in August 1917 in South San Francisco and was a 14-year-old freshman in high school in Burlingame when a senior baseball player named Russ Cunningham walked her down the hall. both were smitten, but Rose’s parents laid down the law: He could visit her at their home, but she couldn’t date him.
“They finally let me go to the movies with him, but they made me take my sister along,” she says. “So we’d drop her off at the theater, then we’d go park.”
They got engaged as teenagers, but she got angry and threw her ring at him when he told her he might have a crush on a different girl. she was 18, dating other boys, when he changed his mind.
“Let’s stop all this foolishness and get married,” he told her.
“When?” she asked.
“Let’s go to Reno and do it tonight.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I have a date.”
“Well … let’s go after your date!”
“OK,” she said.
Rose wrote a note and gave it to her siblings to deliver to her parents. she went roller skating with a boy named Graden, kissed him goodnight, hopped into Russ’ 1936 Chevy at midnight, and they headed for the hills. It was Feb. 23, 1937.
A blizzard detoured them onto Highway 49. They ran out of gas in the middle of the night and recruited a cab driver to wake up a gas station owner. A pastor married them in his home.
They started their adventure with $30, which went for gasoline, a marriage license, food and the pastor’s fee. They had nothing left for a room, so they drove all the way back to San Bruno, pausing at 5 a.m. at the top of Donner Pass, where Russ took a picture of his new bride.
“He had these fancy horns on the bumper,” she says, pointing to the photo. “Just before he snapped the shot, he asked me to move over so he could see his horns.”
They slept together that night in Russ’ bedroom, off the back porch of his parents’ home, sharing his twin bed. at 5 p.m., they knocked on her parents’ door.
“My father just said, ‘Well, you could have told me,’” Rose says. “Then, he turned around and said, ‘Mother, put on a couple more plates. We have company for dinner.’ They were only mad at us for a few seconds.”
Fired, then rehired
she was fired from her job at a Burlingame creamery for skipping work to get married, but she immediately went to the head of the Borden’s plant to plead her case. He not only rehired her, but promoted her to manage to main creamery at age 18 — a job that gave her seniority over the woman who had dismissed her.
Russ, 20, worked for Bethlehem Steel until the following year, when he was hired by the San Bruno Police Department — a career that would last four decades, the final 16 as chief of police.
The first of their two daughters, Roseanne, was born in may 1941, seven months before Pearl Harbor. San Bruno, population 3,500, suddenly increased by 8,000 when the Navy moved in — a situation that kept Russ, one of the town’s five police officers, out of the military.
Rose acted as a block captain during the war, making sure windows were darkened during blackouts. In 1942 she became the first female inspector at Bethlehem Steel in South San Francisco, working 10-hour shifts.
“You’ve seen those posters for Rosie the Riveter?” she asks. “I was one of those Rosie the Riveters.”
their second daughter, Suzanne, came along in 1945. Not long afterward, Rose’s doorbell rang in the middle of the night.
“A neighbor was on the porch, telling me there had been a gunbattle two blocks away and Russ was hurt,” she recalls. “He told me to stay in the house because the bad guys had run off in our direction.”
her husband, in critical condition, underwent 5½ hours of surgery at a San Mateo hospital for gunshot wounds to the abdomen and wrist, but survived and eventually returned to the force. “I was in favor of it because I knew he loved his job,” she says.
A crowd of 600 people showed up at his retirement ceremony in 1978, and the San Bruno dedicated the Chief Russell J. Cunningham Memorial Conference Center at its new police station in April 2003, the year he died.
“My father was totally different from what people probably think a police officer would be,” says Suzanne Choi, their younger daughter. “He was slow to anger and had a great sense of humor. I remember once, when I was 10 or 11, when he took my dog and me out for a ride in the car. We ended up at a drive-in theater watching ‘Lady and The Tramp.’ He was a great dad.”
Multi-talented mom
And, as moms go, Rose was a marvel. Suzanne remembers her mother as the best player on the court at every mother-daughter volleyball game at her high school. she was a master seamstress who taught her daughters to design and make their own clothes. she was a scoutmaster from Brownies through Senior Scouts, and volunteered to haul all the neighborhood kids to town ball games.
she also was a tireless promoter of her daughters’ education. Roseanne graduated from UC Berkeley, Suzanne from UC Davis. both became teachers.
Rose and Russ moved to Pebble Beach in 1979. They made four trips all over the United States, pulling a 29-foot Airstream travel trailer behind a Chevy. she did much of the driving.
at age 59, Rose tried golf, recording three birdies and achieving the lowest score in her group on the first round of her life. she joined Rancho Cañada Golf Club, where she was in charge of the women’s golf team until 2006. her handicap was a 14.
“I took three lessons — one on how to hold the club, one on the swing, and one on chipping and putting, which is what did it for me. I became pretty good from 150 yards in,” she says. “Russ played golf, too, but he never beat me.”
she scored a hole-in-one on April 2, 1987 at Rancho Cañada. Russ got his hole-in-one on the same golf course eight years later.
The formula for her good health and longevity is multipronged, she believes. “Being happy, eating organic foods before anybody really knew it was healthier, staying busy, and enjoying people,” she says. “And having a wonderful family keeps you young. my house has always been the gathering place, and that’s the way I like it.”
And her duties at the Callaway … she has no intention of stepping down anytime soon, she says.
“I’m training a woman to do my job in case I can’t do it anymore,” she says. “But, if they ask me back next year, I plan to be there.”
Dennis Taylor can be reached at 646-4344 or dtaylor@montereyherald.com.
<a href="http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_16950452tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_16950452Mon, 27 Dec 2010 09:32:06 GMT 00:00″>Longtime Pebble Beach golf volunteer Rose Cunningham not slowing down at 93
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