Madonna (Morin) Cunningham

Madonna (Morin) Cunningham, age 102, of Sioux City, died on January 16, 2019, at Holy Spirit Retirement Home following a short illness.

Because our Sister, Aunt and Friend was the sunniest and friendliest of women, services will be held at 10:30 A.M. Saturday, June 1, 2019 at Blessed Sacrament Church.  Visitation with the family present will be held one hour prior to the service at the church.  Burial will be at Calvary Cemetery.

Madonna Cunningham was a beautiful person.  She was tall and cut a fine figure.  She was a career-woman, who dressed up every day to the end of her long life and always looked like a million bucks.  Madonna shared the go-go-go gene that came with all the kids in the Morin family—when she worked, she worked HARD.  She was also an energetic visitor with all neighbors, friends and relatives—Madonna could keep a conversation going like no one else we have ever known, remembered everybody and found everyone interesting, including your dog.  She was a good cook, made excellent almond snowball cookies (which she would produce for you to take on your journeys, if you mentioned how much you liked them), and she always had a little hard candy to share.  Madonna kept a fine garden and, over 50 years of tender and uniquely tasteful care, created a beautiful expression of her welcoming and elegant personality in the home she loved with all her heart.  We will all remember the pictures in her lovely golden frames of every size and shape, her eclectic and sumptuous fabric choices, graceful ceramic ladies, treasured Haviland China, warmly glowing Victorian lamps, pretty wooden chairs that were meant to sit in, and the always fascinating illustrations on her collection of Scandinavian blue plates.  She was a lady, and she was our buddy—always glad to see us, a nimble wit, ready to crack us up and ready laugh at our jokes.  Oh, how we will all miss her.

Here are the dates, people and places of note:  Madonna Cunningham, daughter of Fred and Ernestine (LaCroix) Morin, was born April 15, 1916, in Elk Point, South Dakota. She graduated from East High School in Sioux City in 1935; attended Business Training School in Washington, D.C., and was employed with the U.S. Government in Washington, D.C., and in Sioux City at the Sioux City Air Base, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.  She retired in 1985.

Madonna married John Cunningham on November 25, 1944, in Sioux City.  They lived in Chicago, IL, Fort Dodge, IA, and Sioux City.  John preceded her in death in November 1985.

She was a member of Blessed Sacrament Church and Catholic Daughters of America.

Survivors include a sister, Vergene Fessenden, of Memphis, Tennessee, and several nieces and nephews whom she loved, and who loved her back unreservedly.

She was preceded in death by her parents, husband, and brothers, Raymond, Ralph and Paul Morin.