Man About Town Podcast - Dino Cunial

Brought to you by the Trusted Sons - America's Handyman Company 209 269 2727 - When Dino Cunial started his career as an educator for Manteca schools, it was a one-horse town.  Manteca High School, where he taught orientation and world history to freshmen, was the only high school in the town of roughly 7,000 people – the same population as the Northern California town of Susanville where he grew up and graduated from Lassen High & for the next four decades, Cunial served the youth of the community as a teacher, a coach, and an administrator – earning him the honor of having his name on the stadium at the high school where he worked for 34 years. East Union.  But before he achieved legendary status for his time at East Union – where he is a part of the school’s Hall of Fame – Dino Cunial was a Manteca Buffalo. In the fall of 1961, Cunial started teaching geography and orientation to freshmen at Manteca High School recruited by Don Reed and Joe Handy to help coach basketball.  He became an official coach the following year when he took over the freshman football program and would hold that position until East Union High School opened up – effectively splitting Manteca, and its high school loyalties, in half.  While the opening of East Union High School split the town in half – and led to some very tense opening years where rivalries got out of control – Dino never lost touch with his Manteca High School colleagues or lost sight of where he came from.  Over the years he has worked with a who’s who of local coaching and education legends – Vern Gebhardt, Rick Arucan, Dick Durham, Bill Stricker – and the same year that he walked away from coaching and assumed the role of athletic director at East Union, longtime friend Walker Vick assumed the same role at Manteca High School. Dino is An avid traveler and now relishes watching his grandchildren play sports both locally and in other parts of California. While he misses the town that he knew when he first arrived more than 50 years ago, Cunial said he still loves Manteca and those that call it home. He and his wife Sharon live here still and now I am going to scratch the surface of the life of DINO CUNIAL