The Cunninghams

“I’ve always said that Memphis is like an onion. Made up of many layers, each one has its own flavor and texture. Sometimes one layer is a clue to what the next one holds; sometimes, the next is a complete surprise.” “Dix” Cunningham, ca. 1973
So, even though Memphis was a new experience for “Dix” Cunningham, it was going through changes of its own.
In 1973, the race riots were a barely suppressed 5-year-old memory, Elvis was yet to make news as much of anything but a music icon, modernization was blooming around the city, Interstate 40 wasn’t finished through Overton Park, Henry Loeb was out as Mayor, and all was right with the city!
He pretty much didn’t care. Memphis might indeed be “the World’s Largest Example of a One-Horse Town” as was frequently said, but “Dix” just didn’t care. He had come there on a mission: he just wanted to find out what had happened to his Dad. Not Al Dixon, his step-father, but Chet Cunningham, his real Dad!
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March 6th, 1836 began as a dreary day for Robert W. Cunningham; cold and still in the pre-dawn morning, it began to warm as the time went on under the bright Texas sun. It could have become a somewhat pleasant day, and undoubtedly was elsewhere, even in that part of Texas.
Of the original 232 defenders of the Alamo, only 81 men could “toe the line” that morning, and several of them required assistance to even do that. That they, as well as the “able-bodied” few that were left to fight, would do so was a testament in courage and fortitude that would ring loudly down through the corridors of history, even to this present day.
Even more than this, the Alamo defenders were unique in their own right.
A more diverse group of like-minded men, fighting for a single cause, you were not likely to find anywhere. You had tall, lanky Tennesseans in buckskins fighting next to simple farmers in home-spun, rough clothing. Next to doctors, teachers and other educated men, were Tejanos of Mexican heritage, for whom the opportunity for freedom from the tyranny of Mexican rule seemed a worthy fight. They all fought next to men of many stripes, who yearned for a life of freedom in this land called Texas.
Texicans all, they came from just about every state in the United States, from Mexico itself, and even from places as far away as England, Ireland, Scotland, and Denmark!
They fought ferociously, bravely, and well to the end.
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There was no false sense of hope among them. They each could see how their numbers had dwindled. Each one of them had said goodbye to others; not necessarily with words; sometimes a squeeze of a shoulder or a pat on the back had to replace words they simply could not muster.
For days, Santa Ana’s buglers and other bandsmen had been playing non-stop the somber musical aire “DeGuello” (meaning “No Mercy”) to let the defenders know they would suffer the ultimate fate. For men used to living on the frontier, this was merely a reflection of that life, where death could come quickly from a snakebite or an arrow, a fever or a falling rock, a bear or a bad man.
For those not so used to frontier life, it might have been different. But no man in this fight, seasoned or not, cowered in a corner. They stood tall, proud of the battle they had put up so far, and determined to finish it with as big an honor guard of enemy dead as they could take with them to Eternity.
So, the friends from Tennessee spoke of the original trip to Texas from Memphis, which served as Bobby’s “breaking-in”, of subsequent treks together as a group of comrades, of his beloved Angie and their homestead here in Texas with their two wonderful boys, and of how his memories of Memphis and meeting Angie there were cherished and dear to him. He told them of writing a letter to Angie and another one to his folks in Arkansas, and how he hoped that the letters had somehow made it through the Mexican lines. He regretted that she might not know what had happened to him, and he hoped beyond hope that she would not see him as having abandoned her.
Three hours later, after that final cavalry charge overran the crumbling defenses, Bobby Cunningham lay mortally wounded – pierced through the lower abdomen by a Mexican lance, with four additional sabre cuts to his legs and chest – trying to slowly and painfully crawl toward where Davy Crockett and his friends had made their final stand, and now lay in a ragged heap in the dust of the open area between the main mission and the long, low barracks structure.
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As the clearing out of the barracks and church continued to rage into the morning, his thoughts drifted to memories far more pleasant than his present circumstances.
A final lift of his canteen and a welcome swallow of cool water down a parched throat, and Bobby Cunningham was left with his memories.
His first thoughts were of Angie, little Bobby, and baby Oskar; he had a sharp mental picture of the three of them down at the stream running by the house, with Oskar sitting contentedly, laughing in the stream, Bobby happily splashing him endlessly to his peals of delight, and Angie sitting peacefully under the elm, viewing it all over the edge of her book, her skirt hitched up above her knees, sunning her still-trim legs.
It was the thought of those legs that did it!