Lakeside School

Image: Ronnie Cunningham ’86 and his daughter Joie at Upper School assembly on Nov. 13. 

During the Upper School assembly on Nov. 13, Ronnie Cunningham was presented with the 2024-2025 Lakeside/St. Nicholas Distinguished Alumni Award in front of an audience that included Ronnie's family, friends, and former teachers, as well as students and current employees. After his remarks to the student body, Ronnie received a standing ovation. The following citation was read aloud as part of the award presentation.

The summer before psychologist Ronnie Cunningham started fourth grade at Martin Luther King Elementary School in Madison Valley, his two older sisters signed up for the Lakeside Educational Enrichment Program. Cunningham had no idea what it was, but every morning he walked with them to the bus stop, watched them board, and headed home alone to make himself fried bologna or scrambled eggs. One day, the driver (either legendary coach Bill McMahon, class of 1961, or former LEEP director Craig Stewart) asked him, “Hey, why don’t you just hop on?” That step was auspicious: Cunningham joined his sisters for a few days that summer, then six weeks the next, learning to build hobby rockets, going camping at Cape Alava, and soon after was asked to join the fifth-grade class at Lakeside. He became the first Black student who attended the school for all eight years, a lifer. His most vivid memory of the first day: showing up—smiling with big, wide eyes—in a blue corduroy suit, hoping to fit in.

Showing up. If there’s a pattern, an intention, throughout Cunningham’s life, it may well be this: showing up. He has always been present, loyal, and game; he’s both vulnerable and uncompromising, soft-hearted and tough. While he now has a pages-long CV and a wall of certificates that prove his bona fides in psychology, education, and athletics, it is his relationships with human beings that mean the most to him—and by extension, to us. In the modern noise of self-promotion, fast stats, and buzz, Cunningham stands out by ignoring all of it; what he wants most of all is to help his clients change, improve, and fly off strong. To render himself obsolete. His impact is the immeasurable kind, and in being immeasurable, it is most worthy of recognition. True, he was a four-sport athlete at Lakeside, then went on to play football and become an all-American in track and field at Occidental College, where he was awarded the African American Male Scholar of the Year in 1990.

True, he was called to help save a German pro football team from relegation—then stayed abroad to play for four years. He has worked as the program director of Conflict Resolution Unlimited and a mental health specialist at Seattle Children’s Home. True, he was the head football coach at Nathan Hale from 1995-2003—while earning his masters in school psychology and PhD in educational psychology at the University of Washington, directing internships, teaching at LEEP and the UW, and raising his own kids. At the same time, Cunningham joined a brand-new organization called Rainier Scholars, a rigorous academic program to place and support students of color in the college preparatory system, including schools like Lakeside. For nine years, he was their educational psychologist, dean, fundraiser, marketer, researcher. Since 2012, he has been a practicing therapist, providing counsel for children, teens, and families. He has never stopped showing up for anyone who is fortunate to enter his orbit. And after a meandering life of serendipity and connection, all he cares about is what he is doing right now. As he says, “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up until just a few years ago. I looked around and realized, this is it.”

Former students speak of Cunningham with reverence: He’s engaging, maybe even intimidating at first. He’s a superhero, a protector, a mentor, a listener. Says one, “He instilled in me a self-belief that I could do anything.” Says another, “I knew he had it from the first time I saw him.” Most of them have a familiar refrain: “I wouldn’t have gone to Lakeside if it weren’t for Ronnie.” Thanks to Rainier Scholars—and really, to Cunningham—Lakeside is a different, more diverse, and immeasurably better place than it was when a little boy showed up in a blue corduroy suit.

For his lifelong service to children and families, his unwavering dedication to our mental and emotional health, and the inspiration and support he has provided to countless students at Lakeside and well beyond, the Lakeside/St. Nicholas Alumni Association is proud to honor Ronnie Cunningham ’86 with the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award.