FORBES “P-NUT’ SWISHER, 18, OCT. 17, 1987 – MAY 31, 2006
Pieces of Paper
When the letter came, offering an academic scholarship to Bethune-Cookman College, the Swisher family greeted it with screams of joy. Forbes “P-nut” Swisher, 18, would be the first in the family to go to college. His mother, Denise, 35, mailed a copy of the letter to P-nut’s father, Richard Clay, in Detroit. Clay copied the letter over and over, mailing it to family and friends.
Three months later, Denise Swisher spends her days copying and distributing a different kind of news – fliers that tell the story of her son’s death on May 31, under this headline: “P-NUT WAS #10 THIS YEAR. WHAT NUMBER WILL YOU BE?”
The campaign to stop more deaths fills some of her hours. But it doesn’t erase the hole that now defines the center of her life – the hole that marks her as the mother of a dead son.
She can’t sleep or eat. She keeps a chair and footstool in the trunk of her car for the long visits with her son at his gravesite. She watches a DVD of his funeral service over and over, turning it off only when her other four children come home. She’s always considered herself a hands-on mother, but she can’t bring herself to cook dinner these days. She says she may die of a broken heart.
“Do you have a son named P-nut?”
On the last day of May, P-nut and his best friend, Martez “Tez” Green, went to Bayfront Medical Center to cheer up P-nut’s mother, who was hospitalized for a bad bout of asthma. The visit brightened Denise Swisher’s afternoon. Her playful son teased her about how hungry he was until she gave him $20 to go grab some McDonald’s.
“We always say P-nut charmed his way into heaven,” Denise says.
He promised to return with Tez after they ate. But a phone call interrupted those plans, and Swisher never saw her son alive again.
The events of that day, pieced together from police, family and friends, start with a phone call. A friend called P-nut’s cell, saying he was about to get into a fight.
Swisher says those sorts of distress calls were routine for P-nut.
“If you knew him, he was the first person you’d call in that situation.”
It is a simmering day in June in the Midtown neighborhood of St. Petersburg, Fla. Denise Swisher sits on a porch with her cousin, Diane Roberts, trying to calm her trembling limbs as she tells the story. Roberts understands Swisher’s pain in a way few can; she lost her 20-year-old son, Antonio “Pacman” Roberts, to gun violence barely a year earlier.
The call to P-nut soon had him and Tez in the car with a few other friends, heading to 17th Avenue South and 29th Street. Later, some said the dispute apparently started over a girl. But at the time, the cause didn’t matter; P-nut and Tez were there to back up a friend.
The number of people involved in the fight isn’t certain. Police can confirm five. What started as a verbal battle escalated when guns appeared. Police believe at least one person on each side of the argument began shooting.
P-nut and Tez raced for the shelter of the car. Tez dove behind the wheel and looked to his left. The passenger seat was empty.
P-nut lay just outside the car, a gunshot to his head. Friends put his limp body into the car and raced to Bayfront Medical Center, where he was declared dead at 6:27 p.m. He was wearing a T-shirt that read “RIP Pac-man” – a tribute to his cousin – when he died.
Denise Swisher lay in her room with no way of knowing the events occurring in the emergency room. She didn’t know, at first, why the other patients who shared the room were being asked to leave. But when a doctor, nurse, chaplain and police officer stepped into her doorway, she knew one of her five children had died. She just didn’t know who.
The answer came in the form of a question: “Do you have a son named P-nut?”
Always doing the opposite
P-nut hated to be like everyone else. He quit playing football at St. Petersburg High when he decided to go to college, and wanted to make it on an academic scholarship. He planned to major in business, hoping to transfer to Clark University his sophomore year. Instead the president of Bethune-Cookman College came to his funeral.
Relatives describe him as a pretty boy who loved to be clean. He bought his own Downy detergent so he could wash his sheets three times a week. Everyone knew the oatmeal Suave lotion he lathered on was off-limits. Same for his expensive body wash.
They laugh about the time he spent preening in the mirror fixing his hair. He refused to ride the school bus with his other siblings. But P-nut wasn’t about to walk. He somehow persuaded his mother to take him each day.
It’s not that he was conceited, they are quick to add.
Girls flocked to the handsome boy. He lavished them with attention and they liked to have a chance to share his spotlight. His friends say P-nut’s gift with the ladies – and their own – is thanks to P-nut’s cousin Pacman. P-nut was the wild one, never afraid to approach a crowd, his best friend, Anthony “Digga” Dixon says. On Valentine’s Day this year, Denise and Digga, 18, helped P-nut make up tons of gift baskets to deliver to his various love interests.
P-nut’s interaction with women got him into trouble with the police shortly before his death. A 16-year-old girl at St. Petersburg High had accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior, a charge that went unanswered with his death. In 2003, he was arrested on suspicion of auto theft. He was found not guilty in court.
But as he grew into his own man, he had brighter plans. He adopted his own style of dress, trading his oversized T-shirts, jeans and sneakers for button-up shirts and Steve Madden shoes. When relatives teased him, he said he didn’t care; he knew he looked good. Denise Swisher made sure the shoes were buried with her son.
CherBre Jones, girlfriend of P-nut’s older brother Dale, picked out the clothes P-nut wore the day he was buried – a yellow Enyce T-shirt and matching jeans. Bright colors dominated P-nut’s wardrobe because he wanted to be seen.
“He liked to out-do everyone,” CherBre, 18, says, “You should see what Denise did with his grave. You can see it from far away. He has his own little garden.”
Family Bonds
Detroit native Denise Swisher was 17 and living in Tallahassee when P-nut rushed into the world on Oct. 17, 1987. She says he nearly popped out in the car on the way to the hospital. Young as she was, she says she stayed away from drugs and alcohol and devoted herself to her children. Swisher moved to St. Petersburg in 1989 with her three sons Dale, P-nut and Josh. Eight years ago she married Andrew “Dubbie” Hitchcock, combining the Swisher and Hitchcock clans to create a bustling home of 10 children. They each had five children from previous relationships. P-nut was her only child with Richard Clay.
Swisher named her second son Forbes Burdette for his grandfather. But his Aunt Vicky quickly nicknamed him P-nut for his chubby cheeks.
He grew up in a tight weave of family and friends. He visited his biological father in Detroit every summer, and they spoke several times a week. He looked up to his stepfather and his boss, Carlos Jefferson, who was the older brother of P-nut’s best friend, Digga.
“He always told me he wanted to grow up to be a combination of me, his dad and stepdad,” Carlos says, a tattoo memorializing P-nut still fresh on his forearm.
Denise Swisher and Hitchcock have separated but continue to keep their families together. Swisher says Hitchcock is her best friend. CherBre Jones says the neighborhood marvels when they all show up at church together or go on family outings. Hitchcock watches over Jones’ 2-year-old daughter, DaBreyannah, daily.
P-nut doted on his niece and his influence on her is evident. Little DaBreyannah strides about on her short legs, pumped up with the authority of carrying her grandmother’s car keys. She seems about to jump in a car and drive away. CherBre Jones laments she doesn’t always listen.
“P-nut used to say he got her that way,” she says. “He wanted to teach her not to take no messing from anybody. When my daughter would get shots she’d tell the doctor, ‘I’m gonna tell my Uncle P-nut on you.’ ”
DaBreyannah doesn’t seem to understand that her uncle is gone. If you ask her where her uncle is, she says the doctor. She sometimes picks up the phone and says, “P-nut come home.”
Ms. Jones
P-nut never took a class with Nycole Ellington-Jones, a St. Petersburg High English and business math teacher. But he spent a lot of time in her classroom. When he was a freshman, he tried flirting with her in the hallway, not realizing she was a 12th-grade teacher. Instead of a girlfriend, P-nut gained a mentor.
She called him Forbes, since she doesn’t like nicknames. He called her Ms. Jones and tried to learn everything he could. P-nut didn’t think about going to college until she brought it up. He applied to Bethune-Cookman College because it was her alma mater.
When he got accepted, he called Ellington-Jones with the news before he even called his father. When Denise Swisher was hospitalized during P-nut’s prom, it was Ellington-Jones who made sure he got to the dance. P-nut’s friends called her his second mother.
Ellington-Jones always worried something would happen to him. He’d brush off her worries, and she would hammer home the need for him to go to college, to get out.
“All roads lead to BCC,” she would tell him.
She knew he would succeed if she could just get him there.
Looking at him in a casket, she says, was like looking at her own son.
“I can hardly believe that boy is dead,” she says.
His number is still programmed in her phone.
Dear Mama
P-nut worshiped his mother and loved to put a smile on her face. When she called his cell phone, TuPac’s “Dear Mama” played. He liked to sing her the song and slow dance with her. A tattoo on his arm claimed, “There ain’t no woman like my mama Denise.” When he saw his mother approaching, he would yell, “There’s my queen, y’all.”
He called his family on the phone as they sat in the stands of his graduation from St. Petersburg High to remind them to scream for him. When he took the stage his entire class cheered him on. Friends swarmed him after the ceremony. It took the family ages to get to him. When they did find him he scooped up his mother, hugging her long and hard.
“The love that boy showed was immense,” Swisher says.
Family friend Dana Harrington, 33, known in the community by his rapper name, “Short Fuse,” watched P-nut grow up.
“He started becoming a man, respecting people and things more,” he says, “That came from his Mama. You can’t be 18 and display that kind of respect unless it was started as a baby.”
Many days Denise Swisher trudges through life like a zombie. She’s better when she’s on the street, campaigning to end urban violence, vowing her son’s life won’t be in vain.
“I want to try to stop this,” she says. “We can go to any neighborhood and tell them you aren’t hurting the kids you kill, you are hurting the ones they leave behind.”
But her cause doesn’t help her sleep at night or eat. It doesn’t fill the crushing hole in her heart.
And now she’s the one with a fresh tattoo. Her son’s face graces her forearm. A gold pendant with P-nut’s face hangs from her neck. The engraving on the back reads: “RIP my beautiful baby.”
NAVIGATION:
Introduction
Part 1: Antonio “Pacman” Roberts
Part 2: Forbes “P-nut” Swisher
Part 3: Michael “Mike-Mike” Kerry Smith III
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