PETERBOROUGH — Charles Julius Batterman, 87, died March 31, 2010, in Peterborough.
In 1970, Charles and his wife, Ruth, bought 30 acres of land in Hancock. They spent weekends and vacations there. Eventually, Charlie designed and built an octagonal-shaped house where they lived until Ruth’s death in 2004 when Charlie moved to RiverMead Retirement Community.

Batterman was the subject of some of Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton’s strikingly beautiful stroboscopic photographs, which captured the diver at various points as he twirled through the air on his way to the water. But Batterman was best known professionally for writing “The Techniques of Springboard Diving,” the first book to apply physics principles to the analysis of dives.

Batterman was born June 10, 1922, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He attended Ohio State University, where he was a member of the national-championship swimming teams in 1942 and 1943.

He and Ruth Lester Fink married in 1944.

While he was earning his MA part-time at Columbia University in 1944, Batterman was National Inter-Collegiate and National AAU diving champion in the high board and the low board. He was named to the honorary 1944 Olympic team. (There were no Olympic games that year because of the war.)

Batterman, his wife, and infant daughter spent the summer at New York’s Jones Beach, where Batterman performed in diving shows in order to support his family. That and several jobs coaching high-school basketball disqualified him from competing in the 1948 Olympic games.

In 1949, Batterman went to Harvard University as an assistant coach. In 1956, he was appointed assistant professor of physical education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also coached swimming, diving, soccer, lacrosse and water polo.

In 1968, he wrote a children’s book, “How to Star in Swimming and Diving.”

In the summers of 1967 and 1968, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State, Batterman traveled to Poland to set up training camps to prepare young Polish swimmers and divers for international competition. The swimmers he coached broke between 15 and 20 Polish national records.

Batterman retired from MIT in 1987; soon thereafter, he and his wife moved to Hancock. His New England colleagues in the diving and swimming community honored him by creating the Charles Batterman Men’s and Women’s Diving Coach of the Year awards and the annual Charlie Batterman Relays. In 1998, he coached the Keene State diving team for two seasons.

In addition to being a teacher and an athlete, Batterman was an accomplished amateur artist and enjoyed painting watercolors.

Charlie loved music, sang and danced, and was the life of any party he attended. He was a longtime supporter of Monadnock Music.

His wife suffered a stroke, and for years Batterman cared for her in their Hancock home.
Batterman was also preceded in death by a daughter, Amy Beissel.

He is survived by his son, Henry Batterman of Florence, Italy; his daughter, Nora Campbell of Cambridge, Mass.; five grandchildren; six great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be this summer.