‘Home Edition’ will showcase soldier’s family home May 22
They call it “The Reveal,” the moment when the giant tour bus motors away and the lucky winners of an “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” house get the first look at their new palace and go crazy.
As the ABC cameras rolled on Tuesday, Priscilla “Percy” Piestewa – the mother of the late Hopi military icon Lori Piestewa – did nothing to disappoint.
She yelled, slapped her forehead with both palms, bent her knees and lurched into show host Ty Pennington’s arms.
She hugged the young woman who had nominated the family for the home makeover: former Iraqi POW Jessica Lynch, Lori Piestewa’s best Army buddy. Finally, Piestewa made the sign of the cross.
And that was nothing compared to the reaction of Lori’s 5-year-old daughter, Carla Lynn.
She made a beeline to an aquarium full of swimming turtles and past walls full of Native American paintings, finely woven Navajo rugs, pottery from throughout the Southwest and one full of Hopi kachinas, or handmade dolls.
Five minutes and three laps later, Carla Lynn still had not stopped racing from one interesting thing to the next in the 4,300-square-foot, $500,000 home in Flagstaff, Ariz., near the base of the San Francisco Peaks.
The show involving the Piestewas – Percy and Terry, Lori Piestewa’s parents, and Carla Lynn and her brother, Brandon, 6, who live with them – is scheduled to be a two-hour segment in the season finale of “Extreme Makeover” on May 22.
The Piestewas have been living in an overstuffed, aging rental mobile home on Tuba City (Ariz.) Unified School District property. Both work at the school district.
“My feeling is just, they’ve been through so much, losing Lori. I’m so happy for Percy and Terry,” said Liz Gonzales, Percy’s sister. “It’s a gorgeous house.”
Piestewa was killed while driving a supply truck in southern Iraq during the first week of the war in March 2003. The first Native American woman killed on foreign soil during battle, she has been elevated to cult status, especially among Native Americans.
Lynch was severely wounded in the truck Piestewa was driving and was later freed after a daring rescue by U.S. Special Forces at an Iraqi hospital.
The TV show’s producers also arranged for a veterans complex to be built in Tuba City for Native Americans, which was dedicated on Monday.