VERDE VALLEY -

Gerald “Gerry” Arthur Cunningham, 88, former headmaster of Verde Valley School (1975-1977), died May 15 at his home in Patagonia. He was born February 17, 1922.

Gerry was preceded in death by his wife Ann Carman Cunningham and is survived by his children, David, Peter and Penny Cunningham, daughter-in-law Jeanne Richardson, five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson.

Donations in his memory may be made to the Verde Valley School Scholarship Fund or to the Nature Conservancy.

The 1977 VVS Ambros was dedicated to the Cunninghams. Here is the inscription:

“In the two years since Gerry Cunningham became headmaster of Verde Valley, the school has again become financially viable and has rediscovered its former ideals and sense of community. That it has done so has been due in large part to the tireless work of both Ann & Gerry Cunningham. In appreciation of their devoted efforts the yearbook staff dedicates the 1977 yearbook to them.”

Cliff Perkins Remembered (1923 - 2010)

From the Perkins Family:

Many of you have already heard of the death on November 1 of Cliff Perkins, former Verde Valley School teacher from 1955 to 1989. Because many of you have written, phoned and visited us with words of sympathy and the comfort of wonderful memories, we would like to thank you and give you some of the highlights of his life.

Born Clifford C. Perkins in Wilmington, Delaware on October 1, 1923, his happy childhood and youth furnished him with a wealth of rich detail which he incorporated in the many stories he continued to write throughout his life. He graduated from P.S. Dupont High School where he began a career as a radio announcer in his senior year. In 1944 he entered the U. S. Army, serving in the Pacific as Staff Sergeant, and was head of Armed Forces Radio in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan at the end of World War II. He entered Hobart College in 1946 where he met and later married Marguerite “Maggie” Hymes. Graduating in 1949 with a B.A. degree in History and Political Science, he went on to Columbia University, receiving an M.A. degree in American Literature in 1951. Later he did further study in American History at U.C. Berkeley and at Harvard.

He began his teaching career at the Perkiomen School in Pennsylvania. While there, he read an article in Arizona Highways about a new school in Sedona, Arizona, the Verde Valley School. Its emphasis on international relations and its program of field trips and studies of Southwest Indian and Mexican cultures interested and excited him. He met with the school’s founder, Hamilton Warren, who offered him and his wife positions on the faculty. In 1955 Cliff began teaching American literature and history at the Verde Valley School and continued to teach there for 34 years.

Cliff also served the school over the years in various other capacities. He directed the school’s summer camp in the early years, was in charge of West Dorm (later named Perkins Hall in his honor) for 13 years, was Dean of Students for five years, led field trips to Mexico and the reservations and later was head of the field trip program . He initiated and took part in a number of projects such as the building of Classroom 7 and, particularly dear to him, the building of the Thoreau Hut with his students in the mid sixties, an idea that caught fire at a time when they were studying Walden. He chaired the history department for many years and developed several new courses, one of them a study of the Negro in America, and another a U.S. History honors seminar.

Throughout his teaching career Clilff continued his personal writing, completing a novel, a screenplay, and numerous short sketches and stories, as well as keeping up a continuous correspondence with friends and former students.

Cliff was a beloved teacher who challenged, inspired and entertained his students. He was dedicated to teaching and to Verde Valley School. Upon his retirement he was given the title of Dean of Faculty Emeritus in honor of his many contributions to the school and to generations of students. In his retirement he continued to write his stories and memoirs, and to enjoy discovering new writers and new ideas about history and politics. In the cards and letters his family has received from former students, colleagues and friends, many things about Cliff are mentioned again and again. Among them, his sense of humor, his contagious enthusiasm, his joy in teaching, his expansive story telling, his generosity of spirit, his warmth and ease with all persons, his ability to instill in his students a love of learning. One of the great comforts to his family is the knowledge that in Cliff’s lifetime he experienced the love and respect of many of his former students who frequently wrote and visited him, sharing with him memories of their days together and their enjoyment of his classes.

Preceded in death by his infant daughter Laura and 17 year-old son Thomas, Cliff is survived by Marguerite, his wife of 61 years, son Jeffrey and his wife Cris, son Joseph and his wife Liz, a sister Dorothy Craig, two grandsons and two stepgrandaughters. We would like to thank all those who have shared with us memories of Cliff. We are tentatively considering a celebration of Cliff’s life sometime in the next few months, perhaps in the days before the June reunion.

Cliff Perkins Remembered by Paul Stein: Much has been said about what a great teacher and good colleague Cliff was, but I would like to add something from the perspective of a friend.

I first came to VVS in 1979. Cliff and I hit it off right away, despite our age difference. He had a deep appreciation of Ralph Waldo Emerson and I of Henry David Thoreau, two nineteenth-century American Transcendentalists and nature writers who were friends in Concord, Massachusetts. He began calling me “Henry” and I called him “Ralph”. We had offices in the west end of Brady Hall, Cliff up the stairs and I below, and every night we would both be working on teacher prep and grading, and later in the night, our own writing. Two or three times a night we would take a break, I’d come upstairs, and we would talk for fifteen or twenty minutes about teaching or writing.

It was an idyllic time for me. Cliff, though he scoffed at the idea himself, was not just an educator, but also an intellectual. His entire life he was interested in ideas and thought seriously about current events, history and whatever he was reading. He was a great story teller who used his gifts of humor, wit, insight into human events and exaggeration to entertain. He was a talker. I think he thought things through by talking about them and retelling them. He was a writer who used his considerable talents as a story teller to comment on life as he had known it. He wrote some pieces which were stunningly good. He had a wonderful appreciation of the follies of human nature and was able to laugh at himself. He was a wonderfully good sport and took all of my teasing and jokes in stride.

Most of all, Cliff was a good friend. He was loyal, kind, and supportive. He was not someone who abandoned his friends when things got tough or when they were going through difficult times. He told you the truth as he understood it. I still remember a time when I had given him one of my manuscripts to read and when he talked to me about it he began by saying, “Now we can still be friends after this, can’t we?” Above all, Cliff was a good and interesting man. He had his faults, but I think he was as beloved for them as he was for his virtues, which says a lot about him.

The second longest friendship of my life, 31 years, was with Cliff. I will always miss him. - by Paul Stein

Verde Valley School
3511 Verde Valley School Rd.
Sedona, AZ 86351
P: 928.284.2272
F: 928.284.0432