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BY MARK McKEON
 BRISTOL,
CT – Raymond “Hully” Bunn of Bristol died at age 91 on August 25 at
Bristol Hospital after an illness. Bunn won more than a hundred
Stock Car races in a career that lasted from 1949 to 1965 and was
inducted into the New England Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 2001.
Bunn was motivated to get into racing by a medical diagnosis he
received when he mustered out of the Armed Forces shortly after
World War II. The examining physician took him aside and told him
that he had a bad heart and needed to take it easy. “I thought, what
the hell, if I’m going to die soon any way I might as well enjoy
myself, so I started racing,” Bunn recalled.
His first race was during the 1949 season at Plainville (CT)
Stadium. His biggest win may have been the first 100 Mile Langhorne
National Open for Modified Sportsman Stock Cars (now known as the
Race of Champions) at Langhorne, PA on October 14, 1951 with relief
from his friend and colleague Dick Eagan. In that race, Bunn defeated
such luminary fellow pioneers as Bobby Myers, Frankie Schneider,
Dutch Hoag and Steve Danish. He went back to Langhorne in the spring
of 1952 and won another extra distance race, and in the Spring of
1954, he won the first race ever held at Lebanon Valley Speedway in
New York.
Although he drove in a few Midget races, Bunn found his niche when
the Midgets began to fade and the Stock Cars proliferated. He raced-
and won- primarily in New England but traveled as far west as Ohio
and far south as Florida. Often traveling with his wife, Hully was
able to make a decent living as a driver. “In those days, a feature
paid two or three hundred dollars to win and a car cost that much or
less, so if you won a couple of features a week you could raise a
family on your winnings,” Bunn recalled, “and I always raced to
win.”
His NASACAR stats show an 11th place finish in what is now the
Sprint Cup Series in August 1950 at the Fairgrounds in Altamont, NY
in a race that was won by Fonty Flock and included Herb Thomas and
Lee Petty.
Bunn cut back on his traveling and started a machine shop in the
late 1950’s to provide a more stable environment for his family. But
he continued winning as a Modified Stock Car driver, back at
Plainville Stadium and other New England tracks.
A hard crash at Lebanon Valley led to his retirement in 1965. “A kid
went into the turn with no brakes, rolled me over”, Bunn said in a
report published when he was inducted to the Hall of Fame. “It hurt
my shoulder….It still bothers me today. I had a machine shop to run,
and kids at home, so I decided it was time to retire.”
 After
a few years, Bunn returned to racing as a car builder and owner. He
and his son Ron raced a Midget with both ARDC and NEMA and he closed
out his racing career owning a Quad 4 Midget driven by Tony Montesi
at Whip City Speedway in Westfield, MA. In 2005, he and Montesi made
the trip to victory lane on no less than 10 occasions.
Cutting back on his schedule a couple years later, Bunn said “Racing
has just gotten too expensive,” Bunn said. “I had enough money when
I quit working, but to be honest, I never thought I’d live this
long.”
As for the diagnosis of a bad heart, it turns out that the doctor
was right: Bunn had a heart attack when he was 38 years old. “I got
over it,” he recalls. “It didn’t slow me down for too long.”
Bunn’s survivors include his wife Dorothy Bunn of Bristol, daughter
Holly Bunn and her husband Mark Russo of New Hartford, CT; son Ron
Bunn and his wife Celina of Bristol and brother Charles Bunn and his
wife Virginia of Bristol.
Services will be at the convenience of the family and a gathering of
his family, friends and the racing community will be announced at a
later date.
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