Born and raised in Columbus OH, Tom Cunningham is the current Judge Advocate for the Department of Ohio Military Order of the Purple Heart and present Commander of MOPH Delaware OH Chapter 148. He has held every elected position in the Order at the local and state level and was the 2019-2020 Department of Ohio Commander.

Tom spent thirty-five years with the US Government in Facilities and Maintenance Management. Retiring in 2004 he then went to work for the University of Oklahoma and led a group that taught senior corporate Executives how to best utilize their people and technology resources. He retired a second time in October 2014.

Tom and his wife Sandy have five grown children.

In 1968 Tom joined the US Navy, trained as an Independent Duty Combat Corpsman and in April of 1970 went to Vietnam with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 62. Assigned as the lead corpsman for Detail Bufford Hill 55 Seabee detachment building roads in mine-infested territory in the Dodge City area of Quang Nam Province, his responsibilities included medical support for the Marine Combat Engineers, the perimeter defense force of the US Marine Corps, the Blue Dragon Palace Guards of the Korean Marines, and the local Vietnamese population. Working at the jobsite and in the field every day he treated hundreds of military and civilian casualties and called in close to one hundred “Medevacs.”

Tom has been an active member of the NVMM since dedication and is currently serving on the Veterans Advisory Board. He is featured throughout many of our thematic alcoves and the citizenship gallery, where he shares his stories of service that inspire others to become part of something bigger than themselves.