By now many of our viewers are aware that our co-host of Mysteries of the Superstition
Mountains Hank Sheffer has passed away I don't know how far back it is that I've known Hank I
know our paths have crossed many times at various events without our knowledge that each other was
at the same event but I became friends with Hank when Apacheland Studios burnt down and I
was in charge of removing the Chapel of the Elvis Presley Chapel that was used in the film Charles
and the Audie Murphy Barn that was used in Arizona Raiders with Hank's friend Michael Dante
and when the chapel was reconstructed over to the museum this is when I first remember making
friends with Hank because Hank and I and a lady named Cherokee Magnus who has also passed away
were responsible for putting together the Apacheland days at the Museum
Hank had a lot of attributes that other than just being a good Storyteller that he helped with that
people are not so aware of it was he that had worked with newspapers that gave us tons of free
advertisings for Apacheland days our first event 4 000 people showed up to that event and Apacheland
days did well for several years before they changed the name of it and our alumni that were
movie stars many passed away and so Apacheland days sort of passed away too Hank also wrote a
book about Apacheland it was the entire history of Apacheland and it's just chock full of pictures
and it sold up at Superstition Mountain Museum and I think they still have a few copies left
I don't know what the ultimate future of that book will be but I'm sure you could get a copy
if you wanted it was called Queen and her Court Hank also had a lot of expertise on the computer
he he saved our our editors and Camera people Dave and Jane Jones a lot of trouble making
our title slides for each of our stories and I would take the pictures that I needed for my
stories and send them to Hank and he would size them properly to be put on film and enhance them
and just whatever it took to make a really good title slide anyway after a period of time Hank
and I both got involved with Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains and Hank absolutely loved
telling these stories you know Tom Kollinborn was the most noted historian about the Superstition
Mountains than any person living not just because of the information that he'd collected others have
collected a lot of information too the museum has lots of donated information
and Greg Davis is running our library now that's uh that's a huge Library
but Tom had actually been in the mountains working for Tex Barkley of the quarter Circle
U Ranch in the in the late 50s and he knew virtually every square inch of the Superstition
Mountain Wilderness and he had told stories in a newspaper about this for many many years
so Hank went in and he compiled all those newspaper stories into three separate little books
where all the stories were it readily available and this is what Hank used to make his stories
Hank had never actually been deep in the wilderness so it was necessary for us to
collaborate quite a bit and get all the place names and proper names sorted out during the story
so Hank and I began weekly meetings on Mondays at a restaurant for breakfast and we would pour
over these stories sometimes the research that we did required that we meet more than once a week
and on our last visit which was October 3rd on a Monday Hank was effervescent he was very
excited about this story that we were working on there wasn't any indication that anything
at possibly at all was wrong and we walked to the car together and he made his usual
statement "be careful my friend" and Hank and I drove down the road and Hank never made it home
his jerk was found parked alongside the road just a few blocks from his house
and neighbors said that the truck had been parked there all afternoon well we left about 11 o'clock
so Hank apparently passed away about 11 30 or before before noon we have no word exactly what
happened but I'm assuming that it was a heart attack but we haven't heard anything back yet
and we're going to have a celebration of life next month on the 17th for Hank Sheffer anyway we plan
to continue with the stories here but it's going to be difficult folks because even with Hank and I
uh we we were having troubles keeping up with this week really weekly release of stories
and most of our speaker speakers have told their stories and have fell by the wayside due to many
causes the illness age or whatever but we're going to continue telling stories here and we just ask
you to bear with us that we might not get a story out every week because there's only one guy left
and we're looking for some folks to tell a story but that's difficult too because
you know the last few years we have concentrated on trying to separate fact from fiction and we
want to make sure that our speakers don't have a specific agenda to tell
so keep watching folks and we'll see you down the line
thank you watching Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains.