RIP Gene Burkland

[]2eDeYe]

I copied some of this off of another thread on another forum...thought you guys would appreciate it.

 

Gene Burkland of Great Falls, a member of the 200-Miles-Per-Hour Club at Bonneville Salt Flats and a member of a world-record-setting land speed team, has died.

 

Burkland, 73, died Tuesday of lung disease, according to his wife of 50 years, Betty Burkland, who joined him in the chase for a world record.

 

"He's up there wherever that big racetrack in the sky is, gathering his buddies and they're either gonna build another car or are talking about it," Betty said Wednesday. "He said 'If I gotta go to the other side, it will be OK — if they have cars.'"

 

Betty can't talk for very long about her husband without telling a car story because man and machine were linked for nearly his whole life.

 

She said he paid $7.50 for an Oldsmobile that didn't run when he was 14 or 15 — and $10 for the piston to make the car work.

 

"That was his first car," she said.

 

He worked on vehicles early in his life and didn't give it up until his health forced him to, she said.

 

"One of the last times he worked on a car, he got himself on a creeper and got under there — and I had to pull him out by his feet," Betty said.

 

She recalled him working on his second car, a 1931 Chrysler coupe.

 

"At 16 or whatever age he was, he proceeded to chop the top — this was a perfectly good car," she said, laughing and adding that Gene was known to chop quite a few cars in his life. "He always said if you had to ask him if the top was chopped, you didn't cut it low enough."

 

Gene's fascination with cars continued in the early 1950s, when he was an original member of a local classic car club. He then went to stockcar racing, but became a mechanic when he realized he was fast in time trials but too cautious when other cars were on the track.

 

His next project was to build a Studebaker in 1971, and take it to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He set a national record in that car in 1978 when he was clocked at 255 mph — becoming the first Montanan to earn membership in Bonneville's 200 mph Club.

 

"He was pretty proud of that," Betty said.

 

In 1986, Betty, Gene and their son Tom built and began racing their streamliner — and chasing an elusive world record for more than two decades.

 

The trio set a national speed record in 2004, and finally achieved the world speed record in September 2008, when Tom ran a combined average of 416 mph.

 

"That would have been pretty sad if we hadn't got that before he died," Betty said of the family's chase for the world mark, adding the future of the Burkland race team is unknown.

 

While most people knew Gene for his handiness with cars, Betty said his real skill was with a welder.

 

"There was no welding project that he wasn't willing to tackle," she said. "That was the pride of his life, that he could weld things that nobody else could."

 

Among his many welding jobs was working at the Montana Air National Guard for nearly 30 years, beginning in 1956, where he welded items ranging from titanium aircraft parts to lawnmowers and kitchen chairs.

 

"He had a bumper sticker that said "I'd rather be welding,' and he said that until the very end," Betty said.

 

She said Gene was always willing to help others, as friends helped him when he went racing. He was fun-loving, with a dry sense of humor.

 

Since becoming bedridden recently, he continued to joke with family, particularly about vehicles, such as a recent world speed record holder who set the mark with a turbine-driven car.

 

"He said, 'That's not fair — real race cars have pistons,'" Betty said.

 

Gene also asked for ice cream at 5:45 in the morning, then told Betty that by doing so he would show his youngest son "that it's OK to eat ice cream around the clock."

 

Gene also enjoyed teaching adult welding classes and refereeing pinewood derbies, though Betty mentioned there was a catch to that gig. The first time Gene officiated an event, he asked for a kit so he could build his own car and try it out on the track.

 

"He ended up with a dragster-looking thing with a plastic engine on it — which was, of course, totally illegal — but the kids loved it," she said.

 

In addition to racecars, Gene built lightweight Iditarod dogsleds, and worked on a project to develop high-speed tires for land speed racers.

 

"He had a real instinct for how things worked, or how to make things work the way he wanted them to," Betty said.

 

She added that Gene also insisted on donating his lungs to science so research could be conducted on the lung disease he was diagnosed with in 1997.

 

http://www.ugofadini.com/burklandstory3.html

 

 

 

RIP Gene

 

Edit: Sorry for the big pics :)

[b210in]

holy fucking b21o!

[slam_dat_sun]

Just stopping by to pay my respect ! :(