One of the last living Navajo Code Talkers has a newly-renovated home.
John Kinsel, Sr. was eligible for a brand new home from the Navajo Nation’s Veterans Administration.
But the 107-year-old Navajo Code Talker instead asked the administration to renovate the home he built himself in Lukachukai. In 1950, Kinsel, Sr. constructed the home out of logs brought from the Lukachukai Mountains in a wagon towed by two large Clydesdales.
Kinsel, Sr.’s son, says the log cabin was in desperate need of work, with a roof that leaked when it rained.
“We had two waterfalls inside,” Ronald Kinsel says. “One in the south and one in the west. Now we don’t have to worry any longer.”
Kinsel Sr. received the keys to the home last week after eight months of work to repair and improve the structure.
The director of the Navajo Veterans Administration said it was the “honor of a lifetime” to see the work completed.
“Oh, my goodness, it was amazing,” Navajo Nation Veterans Administration Director Bobbie Ann Baldwin says. “For me, as a Marine, helping my brother Marine into a safe comfortable home is beyond words. As Marines, not leaving anyone behind, in a sense, this is the greatest sentiment of that – not leaving him behind.”
More than 400 Navajo men served during World War Two, and developed an unbreakable code in their native language to help win the war.