After Rupert’s death, Phoebe Shackeroff produced a documentary on him shown at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
She recently completed a DVD on Rupert’s life that included all 22 minutes from the documentary, as well as interviews with 13 people who shared their stories about Rupert, and footage taken at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach.
Rupert and his swan companion, Pearl, had been treated at the center, which is planning to add a wing there that will be named after Rupert.
Spitalnick was one of the people who shared his story on the DVD. He’s lived in Newport Beach for the past 10 years, but his house is on the ocean side, not the bay side where Rupert hung out.
He said seeing the swan sitting in the water watching over his father’s remains was one of the strangest, most bizarre sights he had ever seen, as if the swan knew what had just taken place.
“I just kept staring, I couldn’t even speak,” Spitalnick said.
Shackeroff’s family has had a house on Balboa Island for years. Her mom used to kayak around the bay, met Rupert and sent her daughter Rupert’s full-page obituary when it ran in the newspaper.
The clipping really caught her attention, Shackeroff said. She was shocked that a swan not only warranted a full-page color obituary, but that plans were being developed for a paddle-out funeral.
That’s something you might expect for a surfer, she said, not a swan.
“I was just shocked, and I wanted to know more about how a swan could capture the heart of a community,” she said.
That curiosity led to the making of the documentary, a website in Rupert’s name, and then the DVD.
Debbie McGuire, director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, said the Rupert wing will include a teaching hospital.
