Cyrus Kuntz combined in his nature the elements which rendered him a natural leader of men and a director of public opinion, as a journalist -the editor and proprietor of the Daily City Items, and the Evening Telegram of Allentown - he exercised an influence in community affairs that will long he felt. He entered upon the active duties of life unaided by influential friends or adventitious circumstances. He was the sole architect of his own fortune, molding his own character, and shaping his own destiny. His labors were not restricted, however, to the advancement of his personal interest, for he extended his effort to various fields in which as an acknowledged leader he championed the highest interests of the municipality and of the people at large, and with such success that his name came to held in high honor while he lived, and his untimely death was regretted with a sorrow that was at once general and sincere.

In his boyhood days Cyrus Kuntz, when not engaged with the duties of the school-room, worked in his father's slate quarry, but believing that he would find another occupation more congenial he entered the office of the Slatington News where he learned the printers trade. About 1874 he came to Allentown and entered the office of the Herald, being first employed as a comnpositor and afterward as a reporter. He also occupied a position for a short period in the forwarding office of the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Packerton, and for a brief period worked at the printer's trade in Philadelphia. It was on the 1st of January, 1878, that the Daily City Item of Allentown was established on a co-operative plan by five practical printers, N. E. Worman, Charles H. Kramer, D. D. Holden, Oscar Schwartz and Robert Vogt, while Cyrus Kuntz was engaged as editor. The enterprise, however, proved unsuccessful, and the prime movers in the business gradually withdrew, until Mr. Kuntz, Charles A. J. Hartman and Mr. Schwartz were left as owners of the paper. The last died a few years later, and Mr. Hartmans death occurred September 1, 1890 at which time Mr. Kuntz became sole proprietor. From the beginning he labored untiringly for the development and success of this journal, and continued his effort with such ability that the Item has long been recognized as one of the leading newspapers of the Lehigh Valley. One who was long associated with him in business said "As an editor he was very conservative, tactful and diplomatic, with a fine and honorable regard for the rights of others, as he was jealous of his own rights. In truth, he was often charged with ultra conservatism, but if success is the measure of judgment, as it always is in so delicately poised an enterprise as that of conducting a newspaper, then Mr. Kuntz could point to the edifice he wrought as a monument to his wisdom and the accuracy of his Judgment. He was always cool and dispassionate. The natural measure of a man's power is the resistance of circumstances. He carefully scanned the line that led from cause to effect, and few could deceive him as to the motives which gave rise to a cause, and the effect of circumstance it produced. If they did not comport with his strict sense of honor, he refused to give it support, no matter how plausible they appeared. His power of analysis in that direction was keener than many men gave him credit for. He was rarely deceived in a man, and less in his motives."
Mr. Kuntz's devotion to his family was almost ideal. His interest centered in his home, and he regarded no personal sacrifice or labor on his part too great if it would enhance the wellfare of his wife and daughters. He was equally loyal to whom he gave his trust and confidence, and he held frienship inviolable. In his daily life he exemplified his faith in the Christian religion, and he was long a consistent member of St. Michael's Lutheran church, and served as one of its board of trustees. He also held membership relations with Lehigh Lodge. No. 83. I.O.O.F., and was identified with the Livingston Club and the Board of Trade. Although]t he never sought political preferment he was a most active representative of the Democracy of his county, giving to it his stalwart support because he believed it to be the duty of every American citizen to uphold the principles which in his opinion contained the best elements of good government. His aspirations and ambitions were not along political lines, and yet he was several times a candidate for councilman and school director of the Fourth Ward of Allentown. He served for several terms as a member of the Democratic city committee, and it it was through the columns of this paper that he exercised the strongest influence in support of the principles of Democracy.

Mr. Kuntz had been in ill health for almost a year, to to June 5, 1902. He had been untiring in his devotion to his business, but on that day he suffered a paralytic stroke from which he later largely recovered. Because of his ill health, however, he retired from the active editorship of his paper, and devoted his time to its general supervision. His was a life of intense and well directed activity, in which he struggled upward from a humble position to one of affluence. He drew upon the resources of mind and body for the development of a journal that in the course of years he made a most potent factor in the development of the community as the champion of its highest and best interest. As the result of his unflagging perseverance and enterprise he reaped success which should always crown honorable labor, and at the time of his demise he had in process of erection a fine four story business block, a part of which was to be occupied as offices by the printing plant. It is said that as an employer he was ever kind and indulgent, overlooking man faults and forgiving more. He had in his employ at the time of his death men who had been in his service for a quarter of a century, and who gave to him and his interests their fullest measure of devotion and fidelity. His success was of a higher and more ethical character than that which is represented merely by money, for he retained the esteem and friendship of men amidst the beat of political disputatious, the clash of opposing measures and the bitterness of factional opposition. It is said "His family and his paper were the center and circumference of his life. Beyond and outside those spheres he had no desires, no ambitions, no aspirations. They were his all in all. They filled his life to its fullest measure, and beyond that he cared nothing. To his family he yielded a devotion and affection which was as beautiful as it is rare. The daily routine of his life for a quarter of a century was from his home to his office and from his office to his home. In all these years he had practically only one vacation. He was often warned what the consequences would be of his close and unceasing application to the control and direction of his paper. Work, however, was a second nature with him. The Item was the child of his affection. He had lifted it out of the slough of poverty and despondency, from a weak, struggling paper, which more than once excited the derision of its early contemporaries, and made it a journal of wealth and power. All this took the hardest kind of work, the most intense application, and executive ability of the highest order. When he could have taken his east and lain back on his oars, work had become to him as a cloak not easily cast off, and he could not, and had no desire, to break the habits which stern necessity had forged for him in the days of his early manhood. The calm equipoise of his mind was never disturbed. That strength of character which remained unbroken through all the varying fortunes of his life, remained unshaken when the great day of trial came, and the peace of death fell upon a singularly blameless career. "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say- to all the world 'This was a man.'"