"Legendary" has got to be one of the most overworked words in the English language. Overwork and overuse have just about drained it of its meaning. I'm going to use it as it ought to be used, to describe in one word the status of the legendary Bunny Burkett, one of the very first women to rise to the top of the drag racing world.
One of the greatest thrills that I had last year was to spend five and a half hours talking to Bunny. I wrote about the experience and about Bunny's amazing career, last July. What better way to inaugurate my new racing photography blog than by reliving that incredible afternoon. (You can that report, here, on my main website.)
Bunny Burkett, speaking to Jon Paulette and me, 15 July 2009, Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo copyright John Edwin Mason, 2009.)
Jon Paulette, the motor sports writer, and I interviewed her for an article about her that will appear, later this year, in the Encyclopedia of Virginia. Bunny is the perfect interview subject -- smart, funny, self-possessed, and a wonderful story-teller.
Bunny earned her legendary status by winning, beginning with her very first race, in 1964, at Old Dominion Dragstrip, in Manassas, Virginia, and continuing through her 1986 International Hot Rod Association Alcohol Funny Car World Championship, the first and only Funny Car championship that has been won by a woman driver.
Bunny also earned the respect of everyone in motorsports for the courage and determination that she showed coming back from a violent crash on the track, in 1995, that almost took her life.
Bunny with the car that she raced in the Miss Universe of Drag Racing tour, in the late '60s and early '70s. (Publicity photo courtesy of Bunny Burkett.)
I learned a lot that day, about drag racing, about Bunny, and about the price that women drivers sometimes had to pay, if they wanted to go drag racing.
You can read much, much more about what Bunny had to say in the interview and see several photos from various stages in her career by reading my original report.
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