Harry Swimmer
Helping Disabled Children Ride Horses for 20 Years
When CNN announced the 10 finalists for its “CNN Heroes” special, 86-year-old Harry Swimmer was eating lox and bagels with family and friends, keeping his best poker face.
Swimmer knew he was a finalist, but he’d signed a confidentiality agreement and kept the news from even his loved ones.
“I have pretty much stayed under the radar most of my life,” Swimmer said. “So to hear I had made it to the 25 cutoff list, from what I hear numbered 50,000 nominees, I was already terribly humbled.”
Swimmer was honored for his charitable organization, the Mitey Riders, which provides therapeutic horse riding for children with physical and learning disabilities. The program is held at the Misty Meadows Farm, Swimmer’s 80-acre horse farm near Charlotte, N.C. The students don’t pay tuition, and many staff members are volunteers. “Up to 70 kids a day are riding our horses,” Swimmer said, estimating a total of nearly 1,000 over the past 22 years.
Swimmer has been connected to Charlotte’s Jewish community for 64 years. He mo ved there in 1951 after graduating from Penn State University, and founded the Swimmer Insurance Agency. In the 1980s, Swimmer led the campaign to fund Shalom Park, a 54-acre wooded campus that today serves as the center of Jewish life in greater Charlotte. In 2014, Swimmer was also honored with a lifetime achievement award from Israel’s International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
“He’s the great connector,” said Susan Swimmer, Swimmer’s niece who is a fashion journalist. “I’ve always joked that I could travel the world and make friends as long as I hung a sign around my neck that says ‘I’m related to Harry Swimmer.’”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.