WENATCHEE — Peony Munger, the Wenatchee woman who swam like a butterfly for 1,000 miles, died early Friday morning. She was 77 years old.

Munger earned national and international attention last year when she completed a goal of swimming 1,000 miles — one mile at a time — using only the butterfly stroke. The accomplishment took her four years, swimming a mile five days a week in the Wenatchee High School pool as a warm-up for her workouts with the Hydropower Masters Swim Club. She finished the final mile of her goal March 8, 2011.

The feat won her recognition with a story in the July 2011 issue of Swimmer, a magazine published by the U.S. Masters Swimming organization, distributed to members around the world. She was also interviewed on Swimming World TV’s Morning Swim Show last year. The video was widely circulated and can still be seen on Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7gouE4F06k.

“I find it pretty amazing that anyone could swim that much fly,” said Marcia Anziano, U.S. Masters Swimming fitness committee chairwoman. The butterfly — also known as the fly — is a swimming style in which both arms are thrown forward together while the feet kick up and down. It’s considered one of the most difficult strokes, requiring great strength.

Munger didn’t learn how to swim until after she immigrated to the United States from South Korea at the age of 32. She moved to Wenatchee in 1979 with her husband, the late Dr. Richard Munger. A retired U.S. Army physician, he later became director of Chelan-Douglas Health District. Peony had been an Army nurse. He urged his wife to take swim lessons after she nearly drowned. But she was never comfortable in the water, she said, until she and her husband began swimming with the local masters club in 2000, she told Swimmer magazine. She was 65 at the time. Her husband was 78 and legally blind.

She started swimming the difficult butterfly stroke because she suffered from fibromyalgia and migraine headaches. She found that with the butterfly stroke she didn’t have to turn her head and it was easier for her to swim longer distances, said Shirley Schreiber, a close friend and one of her coaches. Swimming was therapy and pain relief for Munger, who didn’t take any drugs for her ailments. Her goal was not to do it fast, but endurance and to be consistent, she said.

“At first it was very hard for me to do it each day, but each day it got easier. Hard things get easier if you just keep doing them,” she told Swimmer magazine.

She was an inspiration for others, said Carolyn MaGee, another of her teammates and a coach for the club. She challenged other members to swim the butterfly with her for her 70th birthday. Each year more members joined her. When she turned 75 in 2010, about 35 people swam the mile butterfly to salute her, MaGee said.

Munger won dozens of events for the Hydropower Masters Swim Club. She was also an excellent golfer, a Washington State Senior champion in 2002.

A celebration of life event will be held in the near future, MaGee said.