[Kzyxtalk] Harry Swets is dead.

[Norman de Vall]

Marco,
Much appreciate the history of Harry “Hooks”;  We worked together during
my first term trying to resolve the housing challenge for those living on
the then County “park” at Navarro Beach in trailers.  We met when I picked
him up hitchhiking south on One and ended up in the trailer community
at the beach.  That led to going to Sacramento, with a car load of trailer
dwellers, seeking resolve from the staff of the Housing and Community
Development Committee and latter onto KGO for an interview with 
Michael Crasney (now with KQED).  After the late night program Harry
offered to show me around the San Francisco I did not know and we
headed down to the TransBay Terminal.  At that time of night it was the
“home” of the homeless.  Hooks suggested I look at the feet of those on
the benches who were down for the night.  I was surprised at how many
of those occupying their six feet of bench who had only one shoe and or no
socks. Others just wandered around in the terminal.  No wonder the 
city tore it down.

I asked Hooks how he lost his hands and he shared the following:
He had no problem hang gliding if there was enough wind but on
that day Hooks ran out of wind as he was headed for a landing
in the middle of his brother’s baseball game.  He couldn’t maintain
latitude as the wind faded lowering him into the high power electric
lines. 

I’ve wondered what happened to him.  I’d listen to him on KGO as
the stations’ homeless advocate.  I’ll be ever thankful for his friendship
and homeless tutorial.

Norman


> On Mar 9, 2021, at 12:25 AM, Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> 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 
> s 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
> 
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