• Posted: November 10, 2020
• better careers, Frank Cunningham

In 1972, the Vietnam War was winding down after close to 10 years of active conflict, but it wasn’t over yet and an 18-year-old Frank Cunningham had seen enough of his friends’ older brothers and neighbors in his south side Chicago neighborhood get drafted to know that it wasn’t what he wanted. Seeing military service as a rite of passage and wanting to choose his own destiny, Frank volunteered to join the U.S. Army.

Soon after completing basic training and advanced individual training, Frank was deployed to Germany, where was assigned to a firebase with a Hawk Missile Battery. For three weeks each month, the firebase was in a state of readiness as a buffer against the Soviet Union. In his role as a field wireman, Frank was responsible for running phone lines to field switchboards and manning the switchboards. It was an experience that instilled in him a lifelong commitment to completing tasks the right way every time. Frank’s time in Germany also taught him the value of working with diverse groups of people to achieve a common goal, even when the most bitter divisions threaten to divide.

“In the fall of 1973, we got the live broadcast of the Michigan-Ohio State football game,” Frank recalls. “There were a fair number of guys from both Michigan and Ohio in the Battery. The game ended in a 10-10 tie, and it almost came to fisticuffs. It reminded me of the White Sox-Cubs rivalry I’d experienced my whole life.”

While home in Chicago on leave before starting his 18-month tour in Germany, the opportunity to sign up for an apprenticeship with IBEW Local 134 had presented itself and Frank added his name to the waiting list. It was a good choice. Following his honorable discharge from the Army in September 1974, Frank moved back to Chicago, learned that he had been selected from the waitlist and began his apprenticeship. Over the course of the next four years, Frank learned how to perform quality electrical work as an apprentice and was soon an IBEW Local 134 journeyman with a lifetime of career opportunity ahead of him.

In the roughly 30 years that followed, Frank got the opportunity to leave his mark in numerous ways not only in Chicago and suburban Cook County, but throughout the greater metropolitan area. Whether working on high rises downtown that started as holes in the ground, at the top of Chicago’s skyline, at nuclear power plants, or in industrial settings like the Dial Soap and Caterpillar plants, Frank’s appreciation for the better career he had chosen never waned.

“I had the chance to work in lots of interesting places, getting to see how things were made and working with a lot of great people,” Frank says. “In many jobs, you’re just part of the process. But when you’re an electrician, you walk into a room and it’s a blank canvas. There’s creativity involved and you shape the process. At the end, you get to see what you built with your hands. There’s something real about it.”

Frank’s decision to become a union electrician also afforded him the opportunity to extend his career after almost 30 years of manual labor in the field began to take its toll on his body. In 2004, Frank completed a bachelor’s degree in labor studies, was elected to the executive board of IBEW Local 134 and began teaching the next generation of skilled union electricians as an instructor at the IBEW-NECA Technical Institute. For the next two and half years, Frank taught first-year apprentices the fundamentals of electrical work while at the same time earning a master’s degree with the support of IBEW Local 134 and the IBEW-NECA Technical Institute. Between 2008 and 2017, Frank took on numerous additional responsibilities while serving in several leadership roles, including as a Local 134 business agent, recording secretary and adjutant for Electrical Post 769, the only American Legion post in the country comprised exclusively of electricians.

Now retired and with the opportunity to reflect on a career filled with rewarding experiences as a result of his decision to join the Army and later the IBEW, the thing Frank values most is a feeling that his many years of hard work were in service of something greater than himself.  

“I look at a lot of what I’ve done as an opportunity for service, and it’s been a privilege,” he says. “I know they were jobs and I got paid for it, but there was always something bigger going on. That all started when I enlisted as a kid. You start out full of wonder and adventure, but you’re expected to do a job and you get it done. I learned that in the Army and carried it on with me through all of the responsibilities I had later in life. Not just with work but also with my family. It’s been very rewarding.”   

To learn more about the unionized electrical industry’s support for veterans, contact us today.