Chapter program provides housing for elderly

FORT DEFIANCE, May 8, 2008

Army veteran Wilfred Holtsoi, 71, at one time slept in an 8' by 12' tent next to his one-room house for safety reasons.

Elouise Watchman, a Fort Defiance Chapter housing committee member, remembered the tent during a housing warming celebration for Holtsoi's new home, a spacious one-bedroom house, on May 2.

She said that she and Ben Bennett, another committee member, visited Holtsoi's home in the "dead of winter" as part of the committee's assessment of housing applicants.

"If you saw the condition of that house you would have probably just cried," Watchman said. "The house was ready to fall in on him."

She said Holtsoi used the "shack" to cook his food and warm up.

Bennett remembered he could see through the shack because cracks in the wall were so large.

He said a waterline ran about 10 feet past the front door of the shack, which had no running water or electricity.

Holtsoi, who uses a crutch to walk, said the house belonged to his deceased aunt who bought it from the U.S. Indian Health Service for $500 in 1946.

The IHS moved the structure to his aunt's land a couple of hundred feet down Old Red Lake Road.

Bennett said due to the deplorable condition of the shack, the committee recommended that it be torn down instead of renovated.

As he looked at Holtsoi sitting outside his new home, he said, "It's the Navajo version of 'Extreme Makeover Home Edition.'"

"It's good," Holtsoi said about his new home. "I'm glad they made it. I appreciate it."

Holtsoi's family hosted a lunch of mutton stew, fry bread, freshly grilled sheep ribs, coffee, bottled water, sodas and watermelon.

Holtsoi, who served in Korea and was stationed in Texas, also sponsored an all-night peyote way housing blessing ceremony.

Kirk Arviso, Fort Defiance Chapter community services coordinator, was the roadman for the ceremony.

Holtsoi invited the Tso Ho Tso Twin Warrior Society to raise an American flag up the teepee pole and then lower it to half-mast for soldiers that were killed in action, missing in action or prisoners of war.

Before the flag was raised, Robert Williams, their spiritual advisor and a Vietnam veteran, gently "smoked" the flag over a small fire in the center of the teepee.

As Watchman watched the Native American style flag raising, she said, "That is so traditional."

During her speech at the house warming, she remembered her son, a Marine, who died in a traffic accident 13 years ago and thanked Holtsoi for inviting the color guard and having a flag-raising ceremony.

The new house was the community's "small" thank you to him and the veterans for serving their communities, Watchman said.

She said the housing committee also helped Malito Jesus, another elderly community member, who lived in Blue Canyon.

Watchman started crying as she recalled seeing Jesus's home, a crumbling one-room hogan with a roof that was caving in.

She said Jesus, who is probably in his early 80s and suffers from diabetes, has an elderly sister that takes care of him.

"It's shocking to see people living in such deplorable conditions in this day and age in America," Watchman said angrily.

Bennett said that the Fort Defiance Public Employment Program, under the supervision of Stanley Russell Sr., finished Jesus's home in November 2007.

"Thank goodness, we helped him before the snow the roof fell in from the snow," Watchman said.

Bennett and Watchman credited the Navajo Nation Council for funding the new homes for Holtsoi and Jesus, which each cost between $12,000 and $15,000.

Bennett said the chapter used its share of the council's supplemental appropriations to chapters for housing needs.

But he said the Fort Defiance housing committee lacks funding to cover a backlog of 100 to 150 housing applicants.

The housing committee includes Eva Dahozy and John Plummer. The committee evaluates applicants based on age, whether the applicant is handicapped or disabled, whether there are children in the household and whether there is any running water, electricity or heat.

Information: 928-729-4352.

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