The commuter railroad tracks between Gloucester and Rockport and the trails through Ravenswood Park, Dogtown Common, and Oak Grove Cemetery were Dave Dunsky’s paths to running success. The long hours he spent training at those sites paid off for Mr. Dunsky, a state cross-country and mile champion at Gloucester High School who attended Northeastern University on a track scholarship and coached Gloucester High’s cross-country team to a record six consecutive state titles. “I just need your best for 15 minutes, just a coffee break, that’s all,” was one of his favorite exhortations to his cross-country team, said Tristan Colangelo, the individual state champion in 1998 and 1999.\ “He was astonishingly brilliant, and he had that presence. His ability to create a training program that contributed to the development of all his runners motivated us,” Colangelo recalled. “Dave never cared about how well his teams were running in September. He was more gratified to achieve success over the long run.” Mr. Dunsky, who is in the Massachusetts State Track Coaches Association and Gloucester High athletic halls of fame, died from a heart blockage Aug. 8 in Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester. He was 73. His Coaches Hall of Fame plaque is inscribed: “The best distance coach in the history of Massachusetts.” Mr. Dunsky, running for Northeastern University, led MIT’s Sumner Brown in an early 1960s race. Mr. Dunsky, running for Northeastern University, led MIT’s Sumner Brown in an early 1960s race. Mr. Dunsky, who was an attorney and former public defender in the Peabody and Gloucester district courts, was a stickler for record keeping and charting the progress of his runners. He even saved programs from his own high school and college meets with the names of fellow runners and their times written on the pages. No race was more dramatic than the one he ran in January 1961 in Boston Garden when, as a Gloucester High senior, he came from behind to win the mile run at the Boston Athletic Association schoolboy meet. “It is the mile that will be talked about for many a meet,” Ernest Dalton, the Globe’s school sports editor, wrote of the duel between Mr. Dunsky, Scituate High’s Pat O’Donnell, and Bill Norris of Beverly High. With two laps to go, O’Donnell led by 50 yards, then Norris and Mr. Dunsky cut the margin to 15 yards going into the final lap. Coming off the final bend, “Dunsky, the boy with the turkey trot gait . . . caught the Scituate boy,” Dalton wrote. “He built a six-inch lead and then fended off a last ditch O’Donnell bid.” The judges said both runners finished at 4:32.2, but they awarded Mr. Dunsky first place. “Dave was my first recruit to Northeastern, and he became a great runner and even better coach,” said longtime friend Irwin Cohen, a former Northeastern University track coach and athletic director. “He always ran to the best of his ability and he never quit.” As years went by, Cohen said, “Dave’s running exploits were surpassed, but I doubt his coaching record ever will be.” Mr. Dunsky spent a year at Huntington Prep before enrolling at Northeastern, from which he graduated in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He was the New England prep school mile champion and at one time held Northeastern’s mile and 2-mile records. He also won the Greater Boston cross-country title as a college freshman and sophomore. In 1967, he embarked on his coaching career at Gloucester High, which went 7-0 in dual meets, thanks in part to his younger brother, Donald, who was the team’s senior captain and Mr. Dunsky’s training partner. “David, who had an encyclopedic memory, was a student of running,” said Donald, who later ran for the University of Massachusetts and lives in Gloucester. “He had a collection of books written by the great track coaches, and I remember the summer before he enrolled at Huntington he would bring Webster’s dictionary to Good Harbor Beach and read every word from A to Z.” Donald added that such dedication to studying was “indicative of why David was so successful as an athlete, coach, and public defender — through his determination, persistence, and preparation.” From 1975 to ’78, Mr. Dunsky coached at Salem High, where he went 21-1 and brought his teams to three state cross-country finals, winning in 1977. He then was the track and cross-country coach at Salem State College before returning to Gloucester High in 1984 to coach cross-country. He retired in 2013 after racking up boys’ state championships from 1994 to 1999. A 1972 graduate of the New England School of Law, H. David Dunsky ran his practice from a Washington Street office in Gloucester. “He was there for people who needed help, and I admired his ability to zero in on the task at hand and make good decisions,” said David Harrison, a former Gloucester District Court presiding justice. After learning of Mr. Dunsky’s athletic accomplishments, attorney Arthur Carakatsane said he “could understand why he would get keyed up before a motion or a trial, giving it his all and sizing up the competition with that inner drive.” A lifelong Gloucester resident, Mr. Dunsky worked his way through college as a cleaner and packager at the Gorton’s Seafood plant. His parents — Henry, who had been a road racer, and the former Stella Pagliaro — also had worked at Gorton’s. His grandfather, Peter Dunsky, was a schooner captain for the former Gorton-Pew Fisheries Co. In February 1925, his grandfather’s ship was struck by another vessel in fog off the coast of Nova Scotia. Most crew members were saved, the Globe reported, but Mr. Dunsky’s grandfather and another man perished. “I truly believe that David had that same spirit of adventure and exploration as our grandfather,” Donald said. Indeed, Mr. Dunsky traveled to more than 50 countries, visiting most of them with his wife, the former Camelia Gomez, whom he met in 1989 in her hometown of Los Mochis, Mexico, while he was traveling to Copper Canyon. They married that year, and she became one of the cross-country squad’s most loyal fans, often bringing water and Gatorade to meets and cooking for the team. A service has been held for Mr. Dunsky, who in addition to his wife and brother, leaves his sister, Barbara Newmark of Woodridge, N.Y. To the end, Camelia said, Mr. Dunsky carried in his wallet a prayer that was written by her aunt on behalf of her family. “Every time we returned to Los Mochis, it seemed everyone knew him, he was so popular,” she said, “and he reminded me every day how much he loved me.”
Inducted: 2007