Legacy MattersEvery so often, we get a glimpse of someone who shows us how great and good a human being can be. Sir Edmund Hillary, the beekeeper and the first man to reach the summit of Mt Everest along with his Sherpa guide Norgay Tenzing was such a man. His life is a model of inspiration for accomplishment and humility.
Sir Edmund Hillary, who died late yesterday aged 88, made his name as the first conqueror (with Norgay Tenzing) of Everest; just as impressive, though, was the use he made of his renown over the remainder of his life.
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Hillary developed a deep admiration for the Sherpa people, and through the Himalayan Trust which he established in the 1960s oversaw the building of 25 schools, two hospitals and a dozen medical clinics, as well as bridges and airfields.
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James (now Jan) Morris, who covered the expedition for The Times, wrote of Hillary working in the half-light, "huge and cheerful, his movement not so much graceful as unshakably assured, his energy almost demonic. He had a tremendous, bursting, elemental, infectious, glorious vitality about him, like some bright, burly diesel express pounding across America."
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Hillary remained determinedly low-key. "Having paid my respects to the highest mountain in the world," he recalled 46 years later in his autobiography View from the Summit (1999), "I had no choice but to urinate on it." Though he took Tenzing's photograph he did not bother to organise one of himself. And when he met Lowe at Camp VIII on the way down, he delivered the great news in a laconic fashion deemed too shocking for publication at that epoch: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Hillary's death at 88 calling it a "profound loss to New Zealand."
Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity.
The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived. But most of all he was a quintessential Kiwi. He was ours - from his craggy appearance and laconic style to his directness and honesty. All New Zealanders will deeply mourn his passing.
"Sir Ed's 1953 ascent of Mt Everest brought him world-wide fame. Thereafter he set out to support development for the Sherpa people of the Himalayas. His lifetime's humanitarian work there is of huge significance and lasting benefit.
New York Times
Standing atop that pinnacle in 1953 was an experience Sir Hillary would recollect many times in lectures and quiet conversations.
“The whole world around us lay spread out like a giant relief map,” he told one interviewer. “I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.”
"We drew closer together as Tenzing brought in the slack on the rope. I continued cutting a line of steps upwards. Next moment I had moved onto a flattish exposed area of snow with nothing by space in every direction," Hillary wrote.
"Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realized with had reached the top of the world."
Before Norgay's death in 1986, Hillary consistently refused to confirm he was first, saying he and the Sherpa had climbed as a team to the top. It was a measure of his personal modesty, and of his commitment to his colleagues.
London Times
From this moment of glory, Hillary’s career opened out into a lifetime of adventure and of widening interest. His own laconic summary of his active life as merely a “constant battle against boredom" gave part of the picture and was typical of his innate modesty and of his dislike of cant.
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Hillary’s achievement was crowned not only by a knighthood and by much public acclaim, by an exceptionally happy marriage to Louise Mary Rose of Auckland. They had a son and two daughters. Lady Hillary was an accomplished violinist and a woman of great vitality and goodness. Her death in 1975 in an aeroplane accident with their younger daughter was a tragedy that hit her husband very hard.
He is survived by his second wife, June Mulgrew, whom he married in 1990, the widow of his close friend Peter Mulgrew, a fellow adventurer who died in a passenger plane crash over Antartica.
New Zealand news We will not see his kind again
He died peacefully when his heart gave out.
"He retained his sense of humour right to the end. He was cheerful and joking...I suspect he knew his time was coming to an end," his friend Tom Scott says.
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A practical man, he knew only too well that death was not too far away.
In 2002 he said: "I don't think it particularly frightens me. I have had a long haul...I have had a marvellous life...I have had two wonderful wives...you can't do better than that...I have a very good life, an exciting one, many good adventures."