Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
SWAP SHOP OWNER WAS ‘ONE OF A KIND’
Preston Henn, who died Sunday at 86, never retired
Preston Henn, the colorful entrepreneur of the Swap Shop Flea Market and Drive-in Theater in Lauderhill, died Sunday at age 86. The self-made multimillionaire nurtured the central Broward flea market from a little drive-in business to a bonafide tourist attraction drawing millions of visitors a year.
He did it with a mix of business acumen and a flair for the dramatic that sometimes got him into trouble.
Henn was once shocked with a Taser by deputies and kicked out the window of a patrol car. He created a flap when he flew an old Georgia flag that incorporates the Confederate symbol. He settled with luxury brands Coach and Louis Vuitton over the sale of fake purses.
But he never stopped loving his job, and he never retired.
“I enjoy what I’m doing,” he said in a Sun Sentinel interview. “What the hell would I do if I retired? Sit home in a rocking chair?”
He made a final gambling trip to Las Vegas last week, friends said.
Henn died at home. His health had been failing, friends said, but the cause of death was not available.
Behind the cowboy boots and southern accent, Henn was a Vanderbilt graduate with an engineering degree, a whip-smart businessman with superior instincts, friends said.
“So many New Yorkers think they can take advantage of me because I talk slow,” he once told the Sun Sentinel. “They think I think slow. But I don’t think slow.”
Former Sen. Jim Scott, a longtime friend of Henn’s, said he was “brilliant, eccentric, gutsy, an entrepreneur. And a showman.”
Henn is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Betty, who was his high school sweetheart in North Carolina and co-operator of the Swap Shop. He is also survived by four of their five children.
Former County Commissioner John Rodstrom, a longtime pal, called Henn “the consummate promoter.”
Former County Commissioner Lori Parrish, also a former property appraiser, worked at the Swap Shop for 10 years for the sometimes “challenging” Henn, a period in which she says she “earned every dime.”
She remembered Henn offering four-year college tuition for the first child conceived at his drive-in theater. Cars lined up to get in.
“He would do things people would think were outrageous,” Parrish said, “but he always had a method to his madness.”
Henn, a registered Republican, had influential friends in politics.
“Preston Henn was one of a kind. He was unique and determined,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said. “For many, many years, the Swap Shop was one of the really most significant attractions in our state and was a must stop for anyone coming to South Florida. He made so many important contributions to our economy and to the landscape of South Florida.”
Now in its sixth decade offering locals a cost-efficient option for a family outing or date night, the Thunderbird Drive-in is where Henn, the son of a North Carolina drive-in owner, staked his claim on 9 acres bordering Sunrise Boulevard, purchased in the early 1960s for $150,000.
A few years later he began inviting vendors to sell their wares on the site during the day, and the Swap Shop, now sprawling over 88 acres, was born. At its height, the Swap Shop had more than 2,500 vendors.
Henn would often claim that Swap Shop attendance made it Florida’s secondlargest tourist attraction after the Disney World complex.
“He built it from nothing,” Scott said.
The Henns also own Swap Shops in Tampa and Lake Worth. Their family mansion on Hillsboro Mile, one of the most luxurious neighborhoods in Broward, is valued at $11.6 million, records show. The couple have a home in Aspen, Colo., which they traveled to on their private jet.
The Swap Shop has attracted millions over its 54 years with bargain prices, country music acts, a car museum, a circus with elephants and unimaginably limitless items for purchase. Shoppers can grab a tomato at the produce stands outside, then head indoors for an eclectic mix ranging from snazzy suits, to self-defense nunchucks. Jewelry and cellphone cases are aplenty. For fun, there’s a video game arcade and skeeball.
Henn, a winning race car driver, has his cars on display in the museum.
And every day, Henn was there policing the place on his golf cart. Friends said he went to work at 4 a.m. On “late” days, he might arrive at 7 a.m.
“He loved going to work,” Rodstrom said, “and he was able to do that right up to the end. And you can’t ask for any more than that.”
Bruce Rogow, a Nova Southeastern University law professor and longtime friend of Henn’s, said the bustling economy that Henn created at the Swap Shop was a tribute to the diversity of America.
“It is the passing of somebody who made a mark. … I used to have students who came from places — India, Pakistan, Cuba, Haiti — they would tell me that when they came here, that’s where their parents started, at the Swap Shop.”
Rogow visited him there on Sundays and said riding with him on the golf cart “was kind of like riding around with a king.”
In Ann Balogh’s 38 years at Quick Alterations on the second floor of the Swap Shop, she remembers elephants in the circus and when big names like Muhammad Ali and Willie Nelson would stop by.
Along with running the Swap Shop, she said, Henn was a good man who gave food to the homeless. He’d make sure to say “hi” to her whenever he walked by.
Balogh pointed to her pinky finger, saying, “He has more brain in this little finger than somebody has in their head.”
In 1989, the Swap Shop’s circus-like atmosphere became home to an actual circus. The Hanneford Family Circus, which offered elephant and horseback riding shows, trapeze artists, clowns and an illusionist working with a lion and a tiger, put on continuous free performances that remain embedded in the memories of many local residents who attended with their schools and summer camps.
Amid pressure from animal-rights activists, Henn said in 1995 that he planned to phase out the circus to offer more live music. Acts performing free concerts at the Swap Shop in subsequent years ranged from Barbara Mandrell and Crystal Gayle to George Jones and Waylon Jennings.
The Hanneford circus later returned, however, and held performances at the Swap Shop through 2005. Henn continued to tweak animal-rights protesters with his entry in Fort Lauderdale’s annual Winterfest Boat Parade, which until 2004 included elephants, tigers and, sometimes, because that wasn’t enough, the Flying Wallendas acrobatic team.
When the Seth Rogen James Franco comedy “The Interview” was released in 2014, many theaters declined to run the satire, which included North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as a target, after bomb threats made by North Korea-backed hackers. Sony Pictures Entertainment briefly pulled the film from distribution. Henn was unmoved, calling the decision to withhold it “idiotic.”
“I can’t believe these Sony idiots wanted to pull the film,” Henn told the Sun Sentinel. “Like what the hell is this dictator going to do? Blow up Muvico? This picture is going to do a lot of money for us.”
Henn, who friend and attorney Bill Scherer described as “contrarian as hell,” wasn’t among the politically correct.
Last year, controversy flapped over his flying of the old Georgia state flag, which incorporates the Confederate battle flag, at the Swap Shop, which is off Sunrise Boulevard, between Florida’s Turnpike and Interstate 95.
Henn told the Sun Sentinel that he flew it as a “joke” and to see the reaction, but also because it was part of his history growing up. Henn said he was born in Canton, Ga.
“One of biggest slave owners was George Washington,’’ he said in a July 2015 email to a Sun Sentinel columnist. “Should we take him off the dollar bill?”
Scherer, Henn’s occasional lawyer and fellow car racer, said even though Henn was a “country boy and pretty conservative,” he had a good relationship with minorities. Many of his hundreds of vendors are people of color.
“He wasn’t prejudiced about anything except dumb people, and lawyers and politicians,” Scherer said.
Henn was a winning car racer whose exotic car collection was once valued at more than $100 million. Scherer recalled Henn taking a Ferrari worth a half million dollars on a ride for his 80th birthday.
“He wanted to go 180 [miles an hour] on the straightway on his 80th birthday,” said Scherer, who was driving behind him. “The straightway isn’t that long. And damned if he didn’t do it.”
In 2005, an eviction of a vendor careened out of control. Henn ended up on the receiving end of a Taser jolt. He was 74. After his arrest, he kicked out the patrol car window and was placed on a mental health hold.
Henn used the incident in ads later, telling viewers “they Tasered me because I was wild about the prices!”
Scott said Henn was a man who “burned the candle at both ends.”
“My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night,” Scott said, spontaneously reciting a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. “But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — it gives a lovely light!”
Services have not been set.