[Kzyxtalk] Harry Swets is dead.

[nsi at mcn.org]

Thank you Norman. For those of us who scant knew him, he was a nobel
acquaintance . . . --beth bosk

 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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