The man who conquered Everest died of heart failure at 9 AM yesterday (Friday Jan 11). A very sad day for New Zealand.

I was so gutted to hear this.

RIP

Perhaps our greatest New Zealander.

No doubt.

this is someone everyone should mourn- not just an heroic New Zealander, but an heroic human being.

I don't know much about this guy, but other than climbing a mountain, what did he do that was "heroic"?

you know david, that's a bullshit kind of remark to make and I think you know that.

do you think climbing the highest mountain in the world is not heroic?

is there some reason you feel it necessary to ask this question after I made the comment? Because to me it seems like you're making a jab at the comment itself rather than the guy who died, and if that's the case, I think I'd rather you say something more along the lines of : mary, you're an idiot for making that statement and I'm hoping to provoke some kind of angry response out of you by taking a swipe at it here in this thread.

at least then I wouldn't feel a complulsion to respond to this question.

fuck, what do you want me to say about the man anyway? I think he was heroic for climbing the mountain, sorry if no one else feels that way but whatever, what you define as heroic is not necessarily what I'm going to define it as. is that acceptable?

this guy was my great uncle.

Actually, no I don't. Impressive, yes. Heroic, no. Self-aggrandizing, yes.


Whoa, whoa. Settle down. This isn't about you. I would have made the same comment no matter who said it, because I don't consider the hobby of mountain climbing to be an act of heroism. As you may have noticed from other posts I've made in the past, I reserve the term "hero" to a much more limited scope than many, and I don't consider self-serving physical achievments (like running as fast as one can across the Sahara Desert) to be particularly impressive or worthy of wide recognition.


No. I wanted you to tell me that he was a hero in WWII, or that he dedicated his life to humanitarian causes after he achieved fame for mountain climbing. You know, something to justify the characterization of "heroic".

I truly knew nothing of the man other than his climb of Everest, so if he HAD done something truly heroic with his life, I would have liked to have known about it. It was a completely innocent question. You personally were not a factor.

Following his ascent of Everest he devoted much of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded. Through his efforts many schools and hospitals were built in this remote region of the Himalayas. He was the Honorary President of the American Himalayan Foundation, a United States non-profit body that helps improve the ecology and living conditions in the Himalayas.

THIS is the sort of story I was expecting.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=18121331

by Frank Deford
Edmund Hillary, the Humble Conqueror

Morning Edition, January 16, 2008

At the end of the century, I wanted to do a story on Sir Edmund Hillary. All the experts in the United States were carrying on about, essentially, the same characters — Ruth, Jordan, Ali, maybe Jim Thorpe. But I thought that what Hillary had accomplished with the late Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa guide, was perhaps the single greatest sporting achievement of the 20th century.

In my quest to find Sir Edmund in New Zealand, I called a journalist there. Might he tell me where I could find someone who had Hillary's telephone number? Just a minute, he said. Oh, have you got it, I asked? No, he replied, it's just right here in the phone book. That's right. Anybody could ring up the greatest citizen of the country, the guy on the five-dollar bill, the hero who stood first on the top of the world.

That probably says as much about what Sir Edmund was like as anything does. Well, really, not Sir Edmund. When he found he had to change our appointment, he politely called my house. I was away, so he told my wife it was Ed Hillary calling. "Who?" she asked, struggling with his Kiwi accent. Finally, reluctantly, he acknowledged that he was indeed "Sir Edmund Hillary." He apologized that he had to change our date, but it seemed that President Clinton was going to be in New Zealand and, being a wise politician, wanted Sir Edmund with him. Sorry about that.

My wife said she was sure I'd understand.

In a suburb of Auckland, Hillary lived on a high hill with a vista of the harbor, but significantly, a large Himalayan tree he'd been given, rises higher still over the house on the hill. It's good maybe that you're reminded that no matter how high you go, except maybe on Everest, there is really something always higher.

These latter years, he lived with his second wife, June, and a large tabby cat, Big Red. Both the Hillarys had been widowed. Ed's first wife, Louise, died in a plane crash, along with their daughter, Belinda, when the plane went down leaving Katmandu. He had just put them on it.

The reason the Hillarys were in Katmandu is because after Sir Edmund became famous for conquering the sacred peak that the people there call Chomolungma, he kept coming back to Nepal all his life to help the people and the land. It became his second quest in Nepal.

At first, when he came down from the summit in May of 1953, many Nepalese didn't embrace Hillary, the outsider who had breached their peak. Hillary made sure to say that Norgay had reached the top a few steps before him. Just before he died in 1986, Norgay finally wrote the truth, that Hillary had in fact been first, and Hillary substantiated that.

But, he was quick to tell me, "Believe me, to mountaineers, who's first is not important. We're a team."

In fact, he admitted that he'd felt a little guilty days before when he wasn't sure whether he really wanted his friends, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, to make it to the top first. They had to turn back barely 300 feet short.

"I wasn't very proud of my feelings," Hillary admitted to me, ruefully patting the old cat in his lap.

Two days later, Hillary and his teammate made it, and all things considered, I'd have to say that I think God picked the right guy to first stand so close to heaven on earth.