{"id":16649,"date":"2017-12-21T23:36:51","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T23:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/?p=16649"},"modified":"2023-10-02T23:45:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T23:45:27","slug":"code-talker-chinle-icon-teddy-draper-sr-passes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/2017\/12\/21\/code-talker-chinle-icon-teddy-draper-sr-passes\/","title":{"rendered":"Code Talker, Chinle icon Teddy Draper Sr. passes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BY CINDY YURTH<\/strong><br \/>\nTS\u00c9YI\u2019 BUREAU<\/p>\n<p><strong>CHINLE<\/strong> \u2014 In the history books, Teddy Draper Sr.\u2019s long life boils down to two sentences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have raised the flag. We have taken the hill,\u201d Draper radioed in the Navajo Code on Feb. 23, 1945, as the U.S. claimed victory over hard-fighting Japanese troops on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima.<\/p>\n<p>But here in his home chapter, Draper, who died Dec. 14 at 94, is remembered more for what he did after the war.<\/p>\n<p>He was a lifelong educator and proponent of the Navajo language; a very good amateur historian with a clear, objective memory; an actual grandfather to more than 60 children and a grandfather figure to many more.<\/p>\n<p>As the caravan assembled Tuesday to escort Draper\u2019s casket from Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, where Fr. Blane Grein had come out of retirement to preside at his old friend\u2019s funeral Mass, the clerks at the Chevron across the street watched out the window.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to miss him,\u201d professed one. \u201cHe\u2019d always come here to get gas, and stop in and talk to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, it\u2019s hard to find someone in Chinle who didn\u2019t know Draper. Attendees at his funeral overflowed the spacious church, and cars were parked a quarter-mile away along the dirt road east of the mission compound.<\/p>\n<p>Many people in Chinle can trace their lineage to Teddy Sr.; as far as his descendants could tally at the family meeting Saturday, he had 14 children from his four marriages as well as an undetermined number from assorted mistresses. They lost count of his grandchildren at 60, and great-grandchildren already number in the dozens.<\/p>\n<p>At the Chinle High School band\u2019s<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16651\" src=\"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Capture-8.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Capture-8.png 227w, https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Capture-8-211x300.png 211w, https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Capture-8-150x213.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>COURTESY PHOTO<br \/>\n<strong>Teddy Draper Sr.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY CINDY YURTH TS\u00c9YI\u2019 BUREAU CHINLE \u2014 In the history books, Teddy Draper Sr.\u2019s long life boils down to two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16652,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16649\/revisions\/16652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv45.demowebsitelinks.com\/ColleenKeane\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}