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TRIBUTE
Bunny
Burkett
[ 1945-2020 ]
BY VAN ABERNETHY
Drag racing icon Carol “Bunny”
Burkett, passed away Saturday, April
4, unexpectedly but peacefully in
her sleep. The 1986 IHRA Alcohol
Funny Car world champion was 74.
Born Carolyn Ruth Hartman on May 29, 1945
in Franklin, West Virginia, the dynamic racer
most people knew simply as “Bunny” grew up in
extreme poverty after her father abandoned the
family shortly after returning home from World
War II, when Burkett was just 18 months old.
After her mother remarried, the family relocated
to Chantilly, Virginia, in search of a better life.
“My mother and step-father loaded me and
my sisters onto a flat-bed truck and with what
few possessions we had, we left West Virginia
not even knowing where we were going to live!”
Burkett commented during a 2015 interview with
Drag IllustrateD.
The move to Virginia forever changed the
course of Burkett’s life after her family moved
into a boarding house, where she met her eventual
husband, Murium Oliver Burkett, the man
who introduced her to drag racing. “My mother
adored him and affectionately called him ‘Ollie’
–everyone else knew him as ‘Mo,’” she recalled.
On their first date, Mo took Bunny to Old Dominion
Dragway in Manassas, Virginia, which
ultimately changed her life. She was mesmerized
with what she saw and told Mo that she wanted to
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD DZIADOSZ
26 | Drag Illustrated | DragIllustrated.com Issue 156