Documentary tells Code Talkers’ stories

Theo Bennett and Carol Bremer-Bennett in their home in Gallup, N.M. Theo recently finished a documentary about the Navajo Code Talkers that he completed with help from Rehoboth Mid-School Students. Carol is the principal at the school. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger / Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Like all good stories, the story of the Navajo Code Talkers is interesting enough to be told over and over by a variety of storytellers.

The most recent storytellers — a Gallup filmmaker, his educator wife, and a group of local middle school pupils — have produced a professional, half-hour documentary DVD that is set to make its public debut on Feb. 12. The film is shaped around the memories of three Navajo Code Talkers: Dr. Roy Hawthorne, Frank Thompson, and Bill Toledo.

“This is focused on them, letting them tell their story,” said Theo Bremer-Bennett, a local graphic designer, musician, filmmaker, and owner of the Glyph Engine design firm.

Bremer-Bennett, who has produced one other documentary, was assisted by his wife, Carol, the principal of Rehoboth Middle School, and her middle school pupils.

The couple talked about the film project during a recent interview. According to Carol Bremer-Bennett, the DVD project was funded though a $19,000 grant, “Keeping the Code Alive,” that her school received from the First Nations Development Institute. The grant had three components, all of which were centered on preserving history and language related to the Navajo Code Talkers.
For the first component, she explained, Rehoboth teachers developed a curriculum to teach the original 200 Navajo words of the World War II code to all Rehoboth pupils in grades K-8. The grant funded prizes and awards for the program so top achieving pupils could win limited edition Code Talker Pendleton blankets or replicas of the Code Talker Gold Medals.

The grant’s second component involved the middle school library, which is named the Navajo Code Talkers Communication Center and which contains a small, museum-quality exhibit about the Navajo Nation’s famed WWII-era Marines. Since its completion, the center has attracted a number of visitors, Bremer-Bennett explained, who visit the center to learn more about the Code Talkers.
Under the grant program, middle school pupils developed a logo and a brochure for the Communications Center, educational activities about codes were developed to teach younger children, students were trained to be docents and tour guides for the center, and pupils made models of WWII military vehicles.

Bremer-Bennett said the third component of the grant — the documentary film — will help fill in a missing piece for the Communications Center. Although the center’s exhibit contains a historic timeline, a Code Talker’s uniform, and WWII guns and military artifacts, she explained, it doesn’t have a “moving piece” that can tell the story.

However, producing a professional quality documentary film is not something most schools have the expertise to do. But Bremer-Bennett needed to look no further than her own family. Husband Theo was in the process of working on his first documentary, “Yezelalem Minch: The Everlasting Spring,” a film about an Ethiopian program that helps care for and educate children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

Local Code Talker historian Zonnie Gorman was enlisted to help, communications teacher Aleke Morris taught pupils interviewing and filming techniques, Theo Bremer-Bennett offered workshops in digital editing, and Navajo Code Talkers were invited to attend a 2006 Thanksgiving potluck gathering and interview session at the school.

Although he was familiar with the story of the Code Talkers, Theo Bremer-Bennett said the interviewing process helped him understand the story in a fresh way.

“It was extraordinary for me to actually hear it from their mouths,” he said. Historians now recognize the Navajo soldiers’ contributions were unusually valuable, he added, but during their actual military service, the men thought they were just ordinary Marines.

After filming concluded, a student crew helped catalog hours and hours of video, and Bremer-Bennett began the long process of shaping the story by editing the local video and combining it with historical photos and film footage.

Pupil Michael Oliver was brought in to provide narration, and Bremer-Bennett added his own original soundtrack.

“I had the idea of drums, particularly the Navajo drum,” he said, explaining that he paired the sound of the Navajo drum with a military snare drum, a Native American flute, and Navajo chanting to produce a blending of military and Native sounds.

Carol Bremer-Bennett is pleased with the grant project’s end result and its creative process. In particular, she believes the documentary will be a showcase piece for her school’s Navajo Code Talkers Communications Center, and she believes her pupils learned a great deal from working on various aspects of the project.

“I think there was a renewed respect for the Code Talkers,” she said. Pupils grasped the idea that with the passing of each veteran, she added, more stories are being lost — stories that will never be retold if not saved and recorded.

The public is invited to attend the premiere screening of the Navajo Code Talkers documentary at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 12 at the new Rehoboth Church. It will be shown as part of a Rehoboth Middle School program.

Copies of the documentary will eventually be available for purchase at a nominal fee to cover the DVD copying costs.

Information:
theo@glyphengine.com
(505) 870-9155