Ten years after he passed a beginner’s test and was asked to join the Cambridge YMCA swim team, Bruce Hunter competed on the sport’s biggest stage, as part of the 1960 United States Olympic team in Rome.
Finishing fourth in the 100-meter freestyle, 0.2 seconds shy of a bronze medal, he recorded a personal best time of 55.6 seconds.
After the race, Mr. Hunter paid tribute to his parents for having made the trip to Rome and for engaging in “a lot of sacrifices to make this moment possible for me.”
He also told Globe sports editor Jerry Nason that “the pressure building up to this night has been tremendous. It’s been quite an emotional experience.”
Mr. Hunter, an All-American who was about to enter his senior year at Harvard University when he competed in the Olympics, died July 6 in his Braintree home on his 79th birthday. His health had declined over the past 16 years due to a series of strokes.
At Harvard, Mr. Hunter set eight varsity freestyle records and was the NCAA champion in the 50-yard freestyle and 400-yard freestyle relay. He overcame poor eyesight to become a high school and college star, and an Olympian. Mr. Hunter was an inductee to Harvard’s Varsity Club Hall of Fame and a former president of the New England Chapter of the US Olympians Association
“He was a lion — strong and intense and a classic sprinter,” said Mr. Hunter’s Harvard teammate Bob Kaufmann, who was also invited to the 1960 Olympic Trials in Detroit and was on Harvard’s record-setting 400-yard freestyle squad.
Kaufmann said Mr. Hunter spent more time than most swimmers in that era lifting weights and doing other kinds of dry-land training that “made him more muscular and trimmer than the rest of us.”
Harvard Hall of Famer Dr. David Abramson, who held three program swimming records, entered the university just after Mr. Hunter graduated in 1961, and noted that “he was already a living legend. Early in my freshman year we met and the advice he gave me had little to do with swimming, but a lot to do with life. He was generous with his time and knowledge.”
Mr. Hunter qualified for the 100-meter freestyle at the Olympic Trials by taking the second and final spot by 0.1 seconds.
He had edged out Jeff Farrell, the country’s best freestyler, who was recovering from appendicitis. Farrell had been able to compete only six days after undergoing a then-new surgical procedure.
Knowing that Farrell was not in top shape, Mr. Hunter offered after the race at the Trials to resign his position in favor of Farrell, but he was turned down by both Farrell and head coach Gus Stager.
“I knew Bruce well enough to know he was sincere, but of course I could not accept his incredibly generous offer,” Farrell wrote in his autobiography, “My Olympic Story.”
Richard Bruce Hunter, who was known as Bruce or R. Bruce Hunter, graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School and was a six-time National Interscholastic All-American. He single-handedly represented the high school, which had no team or pool.
His father, James Hunter, worked in sales for Jordan Marsh, which helped defray the expenses when Mr. Hunter’s parents traveled to Rome. His mother, the former Anne Gertrude Reagan, was a bookkeeper and administrative assistant.
After graduating from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, Mr. Hunter enlisted in the Navy. He won three gold medals at the International Military Games, but did not make the 1964 Olympic team.
Mr. Hunter, who maintained an extensive library of reference books, received a master’s in finance and investments from Harvard Business School in 1974. From 1975 to 2003, he worked at several firms, including Raytheon, State Street Bank and Trust, and Fidelity Investments.
“He wrote with linguistic elegance, always seeming to select the word from among a list of options that best expressed the exact meaning he wished to convey,” said Mr. Hunter’s younger brother Dennis, who also was a varsity swimmer at Harvard.
Mr. Hunter was an avid skier, a sky-diver, and a low-handicap golfer. He also was a top-10 individual finisher on 28 occasions in national Masters-sanctioned swimming events from 1973 to 1996, including two second-place performances. In addition, he was part of eight top-10 relay finishes nationally.
“He derived tremendous satisfaction in mentoring other swimmers in the New England Masters program, striving always to help them become the best they could be,” Dennis said.
Former Tufts University swimmer Varney Hintlian, a longtime friend and Masters swimmer who worked out with Mr. Hunter, called him “a principled man of great integrity and a selfless mentor.”
Monty Krieger, a Masters swimmer whom Mr. Hunter coached at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton, said he “had a very keen eye, was an excellent constructive critic, and a superb coach.”
Mr. Hunter’s marriages to Barbara Ann Allabough and Ruth MacFarlane Hunter ended in divorce.
He subsequently married Dr. Faith Louise Van Nice, a former Masters swimmer, in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital chapel when she was dying of cancer.
“Faith committed herself to Bruce, although she knew time was against her, and he committed all of himself to her,” said Dennis, who lives in Saratoga, Calif.
In addition to Dennis, Mr. Hunter leaves his daughter, Kristen of Boston; two other brothers, Robert of Wrentham and Charles of Liverpool, N.Y.; and a sister, Joan Pearman of Hertfordshire, England.
A celebration of life is being planned for next year, around the time that would have been Mr. Hunter’s 80th birthday.
Kristen, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and whose mother is Ruth Hunter, said she admired her father’s generosity of spirit and commitment to helping others, which was “exemplified by the gesture he made to Jeff Farrell. I was also a recipient of that generosity, which I have endeavored to emulate as a person and educator. My father showed me anything was possible.”
In 2016, 13 months after a debilitating stroke, Mr. Hunter willed himself to travel to Las Vegas for a celebration honoring past Olympians. He could not walk to the podium, but his name was announced and a commemorative medal was brought to where he sat.
“It was one of the most moving and proudest moments of his life, and a tribute to his indomitable spirit,” Kristen said. “I believe that living until the day of his 79th birthday was his symbolic way of touching the wall of the pool in victory for the final time.”
Marvin Pave can be reached at marvin.pave@rcn.com.