[Kzyxtalk] Harry Swets is dead.

[Marco McClean]

Marco here. My friend Tim Falconer from the Community School, housemate 
for a little while in the mid-'80s (when we tried to put up a real radio 
station in Caspar but lost out when the FCC granted the frequency to 
KSAY), just sent me the following obit, including a couple of links to 
pertinent info. I'm also forwarding this to the AVA with Tim's permission.

Tim Falconer wrote:

Harry Swets, sometimes known as "Harry Hooks", died Saturday 3/6/2021. 
He had lost much of his mental faculties to dementia of some sort over 
the last decade, and had been checked into a nursing home a couple of 
years ago, in the Santa Rosa area I think. From there he went to the 
hospital a couple of days ago, one or two days before he died.

Harry was my mother's common-law husband and my late sister Shiloh's 
father. He had one or maybe two other daughters. Shiloh was born on 
12/12/1972 and I think the hang gliding accident that cost Harry his 
hands was in the spring or summer of 1973. He missed his planned landing 
field and crashed into some power lines, the high voltage coursing 
through the aluminum frame of the hang glider and through his hands and 
arms. His hands were amputated a few days later in Denver.

Lots of people thought Harry had lost his hands in Viet Nam. He was a 
Viet Nam vet, but got home without a scratch. He had spent his time in 
Viet Nam doing logistics and taking advantage of the trust and lack of 
accounting in the Marines in the late 60's, stealing entire truckloads 
of goods from the Armed Services and selling them on the black market, 
according to one of the stories he told me.

I don't know how old I was when he started dating my mother, but it was 
well before Shiloh was born, a few weeks after my ninth birthday. We 
lived in a few places in the Aspen Valley, Colorado: first in a trailer 
in El Jebel, then in the mountains above Basalt, and then at the 
Midnight Mine, on the west face of Aspen Mountain at close to 10 
thousand feet. I have some idyllic memories of living at the mine. There 
was a whole gang of crazy hippie outlaw types living on the mountain, 
and we had a small community of about 6 or 8 adults, my mom's four kids 
(before Shiloh was born) and one other kid. At that point, Harry and his 
friends were smuggling marijuana from Mexico. Early on, in accordance 
with their Marine training, they ran across the border with huge duffle 
bags; this also according to very amusing stories that Harry told me 
once and I imagine also told others on occasion. Later, they developed a 
way of compressing the weed into bricks weighing about a kilo each that 
they wrapped in red and blue cellophane. One summer I helped unload a 
camper-shell that had been filled completely with these bricks; the 
bricks then completely filled the sauna that they had built in the 
garage/ warehouse that was the only modern structure at the Midnight Mine.

Then Shiloh was born, quite prematurely, and for her health we had to 
move into town, and ended up spending the winter in Mexico, then moving 
into the Silver King Apartments in Aspen, which were fairly new at the 
time. Harry signed up for John Totman's hang gliding school, which was 
called Get High Inc. He worked for John too, but I can't remember if 
that was before or after "The Accident."
After the accident, Harry moved into cocaine sales, and eventually got 
busted by undercover DEA agents, in a scene that my friend Brad loves to 
recount. He says I told him the story, and I believe him because he has 
a great memory, but I don't remember it at all. The story goes that 
Harry ran away from the scene of the bust, and when the agents caught 
him, screamed that he was being robbed, and got away when some locals 
came to his rescue. But of course he was not able to run far before they 
caught up with him. He spent a year or two in a Federal minimum security 
penitentiary somewhere. He wrote a fantastical sci-fi novel while he was 
in the pen, long hand with no hands, so long hook if you will, and sent 
chapters to me in bulging envelopes when we lived on Larkin Road. After 
prison he came to Mendocino and ended up staying to be close to Shiloh. 
He was often a guest in my mom's house - they had broken up either 
before or after the bust- and told me stories about life in the minimum 
security pen.

In Mendocino he took up painting and various people from the Aspen scene 
came and mixed with the Mendo scene in various configurations. My friend 
Albert had a few rough experiences with Harry that don't show him in a 
good light at all. I visited Albert at Ingebor's house in Laytonville 
last night and Albert told me some Harry stories this morning. I'm not 
going to repeat them here, but be assured they would make your skin crawl.

At various times our whole family moved out of the Mendocino coast. 
Maybe I was the first, after living with you (Marco) in Caspar and then 
moving briefly to Oregon before landing in SF. Harry eventually followed 
Shiloh to Oakland and got a gig with KGO as a reporter on homelessness, 
fashioning himself "Harry the homeless homeless advocate". The ABC news 
magazine show Prime Time included a segment on Harry and his work with 
the homeless that made him out to be a saint. I think I still have it on 
VHS somewhere. It's amazing what they can do with studio lights and 
careful editing.

https://coveringthecity.com/san-francisco-homeless-reporter-harry-swets-hooks-kgo/
(includes the PrimeTime Live segment)

Harry eventually got a house in Oakland and lived there for a bunch of 
years. Sometimes Shiloh lived with him, and sometimes Shiloh's son Andy 
lived there. Harry by this time was deeply addicted to pain killers, and 
probably had been for 20 years, since his hang gliding accident. I saw 
him a few times in those years and I felt like very little of the old 
Harry was there. When I was a kid he had been a great storyteller, and 
from what I've pieced together was a drug dealer and a con man for all 
of that time. He was always kind to me but I never had any money that he 
could talk me out of. He had tried to introduce me as his son, since my 
own father was never a part of my life, but I just found it 
embarrassing, and since he and my mother were never legally married, I 
didn't even think he should be considered my step-father. I guess I had 
seen so much of the outlaw life growing up that it gave me something to 
rebel against, and so I've been a working stiff my whole life, since 
moving to San Francisco and getting my first real full-time job in about 
1984.

Shiloh died of a heroin overdose on 11/10/2015 after getting busted for 
possession and intent to distribute a couple of years earlier in Nevada 
City. By then I had not spoken with Harry in several years.

At some point Harry had been in the care of the VA Medical Center, and 
then in March of 2017 they apparently decided to discharge him and put 
him on a VA bus that dropped him off in Fort Bragg.

https://www.advocate-news.com/2017/03/08/double-amputee-vet-left-on-fort-bragg-sidewalk/

It's really incredible the way the VA found to rid themselves of him. 
The things the VA PR guy says in the article are idiotic. Harry's 
dementia was already so bad at that point that he did not recognize his 
grandson, Andy, who lived with him for years. He called Andy by my name 
and when Andy tried to correct him, Harry just seemed confused. Gilly 
did get Harry into a nursing home. I had thought to visit him before the 
Pandemic, but never got around to asking Gilly for the details. Once the 
pandemic started, of course, I could not have gone to his nursing home 
if I had wanted to, and I didn't want to. Gilly told me on Saturday that 
Harry had been transferred to a hospital, maybe on Thursday or Friday.

So that's the story. Harry's being cremated and his remains will be sent 
to Gilly, who now lives in Colorado. I've been in touch with Andy, who 
says he'll come over, and we'll raise glass to Harry's memory.

Tim Z Falconer
3/7/2021