The end of Timothy Cunningham’s last conversation with her sister was like most of their chats, his sister, Tiara, recently told The New York Times.
“Love you,” she recalled them saying to each other. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Unfortunately, that was last time the two were to talk. Cunningham, an exemplary employee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a 2004 graduate of Morehouse College, passed away on April 4.
But on Saturday, April 21, during a Celebration of Life service at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse, family members, colleagues, classmates, and friends will remember an extremely bright, likable young man who was a highly regarded researcher. The service begins at 10 a.m.
Born in Montgomery, Ala., Cunningham lived in the Philippines as a youngster before he and his family settled in Maryland. After graduating from high school, Cunningham received a scholarship to attend Morehouse College.
A member of Phi Beta Kappa at Morehouse, Cunningham served as editor of the student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger, and belonged to several other organizations.
Cunningham graduated from Morehouse in 2004 with a degree in biology. He then headed to Harvard University, where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate from the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Cunningham served as a research assistant at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which was part of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a pre-doctoral fellow at the Harvard University Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
He joined the CDC in 2010 as part of its Epidemic Intelligence Service and worked in the Division of Reproductive Health. Cunningham was selected as the team lead for the State Chronic Disease Epidemiology Assignee Program in the Division for Population Health, supervising CDC epidemiologists assigned to state health departments and supporting state chronic disease prevention activities.
Cunningham also served as president of the Atlanta Commissioned Officers Association, supporting approximately 1,000 officers. He was a member of the American Public Health Association, the Junior Officer Advisory Group, and the Black Commissioned Officers Advisory Group, and was a liaison to the Minority Officers Liaison Council.
Among his many accolades was being listed in Who’s Who Among America.
The CDC released the following statement about Cunningham’s service: “Timothy Cunningham’s colleagues and friends at CDC are deeply saddened to learn of his death. Tim was a treasured member of the CDC family and his work as an epidemiologist was invaluable to CDC’s efforts to protect the health, safety, and security of Americans.”