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Edmund Hillary, first atop Everest, dies
2008-01-10
Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Friday. He was 88. Muzi.com News 10057616-0 (muzi.com)The gangling New Zealander devoted much of his life to aiding the mountain people of Nepal and took his fame in stride, preferring to be called "Ed" and considering himself just an ordinary beekeeper. Muzi.com News 10057616-1 (muzi.com) "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," Clark said in a statement. Muzi.com News 10057616-2 (muzi.com) "The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived," she said. Muzi.com News 10057616-3 (muzi.com) Hillary's life was marked by grand achievements, high adventure, discovery, excitement -- and by his personal humility. Humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Tenzing Norgay. Muzi.com News 10057616-4 (muzi.com) He had pride in his feats. Returning to base camp as the man who took the first step onto the top of the world's highest peak, he declared: "We knocked the bastard off." Muzi.com News 10057616-5 (muzi.com) The accomplishment as part of a British climbing expedition even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first act. Muzi.com News 10057616-6 (muzi.com) But he was more proud of his decades-long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of Tenzing Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953. Muzi.com News 10057616-7 (muzi.com) He wrote of the pair's final steps to the top of the world: "Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest. Muzi.com News 10057616-8 (muzi.com) "Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation -- these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed," Hillary noted. Muzi.com News 10057616-9 (muzi.com) "But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it. Muzi.com News 10057616-10 (muzi.com) He said: "I removed my oxygen mask to take some pictures. It wasn't enough just to get to the top. We had to get back with the evidence. Fifteen minutes later we began the descent." Muzi.com News 10057616-11 (muzi.com) Hillary's life was marked by grand achievements, high adventure, discovery, excitement -- and by his personal humility. Humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Norgay. Muzi.com News 10057616-12 (muzi.com) His philosophy of life was simple: "Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself," he said in a 1975 interview after writing his autobiography, "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win." Muzi.com News 10057616-13 (muzi.com) Close friends described him as having unbounded enthusiasm for both life and adventure. Muzi.com News 10057616-14 (muzi.com) "We all have dreams -- but Ed has dreams, then he's got this incredible drive, and goes ahead and does it," long-time friend Jim Wilson said in 1993. Muzi.com News 10057616-15 (muzi.com) Hillary summarized it for schoolchildren in 1998, when he said one didn't have to be a genius to do well in life. Muzi.com News 10057616-16 (muzi.com) "I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it," he said before planting some endangered Himalayan oaks in the school grounds. Muzi.com News 10057616-17 (muzi.com) The planting was part of his program to reforest upland areas of Nepal. Muzi.com News 10057616-18 (muzi.com) Hillary remains the only non-political person outside Britain honored as a member of the Britain's Order of the Garter, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II on just 24 knights and ladies living worldwide at any time. Muzi.com News 10057616-19 (muzi.com) He reached the summit of Everest four days before Elizabeth was crowned Queen of Britain and the Empire on June 2, 1953. She immediately knighted the angular, self-deprecating Hillary, who was just 33. Muzi.com News 10057616-20 (muzi.com) Throughout his 88 years, he was always the atypical "typical New Zealander" who spoke his mind. Muzi.com News 10057616-21 (muzi.com) In his 1999 book "View from the Summit," Hillary finally broke his long public silence about whether it was he or Norgay who was the first man to step atop Everest. Muzi.com News 10057616-22 (muzi.com) "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. Muzi.com News 10057616-23 (muzi.com) "Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realized with had reached the top of the world." Muzi.com News 10057616-24 (muzi.com) 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. Muzi.com News 10057616-25 (muzi.com) He later recalled his surprise at the huge international interest in their feat. "I was a bit taken aback to tell you the truth. I was absolutely astonished that everyone should be so interested in us just climbing a mountain." Muzi.com News 10057616-26 (muzi.com) Hillary never forgot the small mountainous country that propelled him to worldwide fame. He revisited Nepal constantly over the next 54 years. Muzi.com News 10057616-27 (muzi.com) Without fanfare and without compensation, Hillary spend decades pouring energy and resources from his own fund-raising efforts into Nepal through the Himalayan Trust he founded in 1962. Muzi.com News 10057616-28 (muzi.com) Known as "burra sahib" -- "big man," for his 6 feet 2 inches -- by the Nepalese, Hillary funded and helped build hospitals, health clinics, airfields and schools. Muzi.com News 10057616-29 (muzi.com) He raised funds for higher education for Sherpa families, and helped set up reforestation programs in the impoverished country. About $250,000 a year was raised by the charity for projects in Nepal. Muzi.com News 10057616-30 (muzi.com) A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest. Muzi.com News 10057616-31 (muzi.com) His commitment to Nepal took him back more than 120 times. His adventurer son Peter has described his father's humanitarian work there as "his duty" to those who had helped him. Muzi.com News 10057616-32 (muzi.com) It was on a visit to Nepal that his first wife, Louise, 43, and 16-year-old daughter Belinda died in a light plane crash March 31, 1975. Muzi.com News 10057616-33 (muzi.com) Hillary remarried in 1990, to June Mulgrew, former wife of adventurer colleague and close friend Peter Mulgrew, who died in a passenger plane crash in the Antarctic. He is survived by his wife and children Peter and Sarah. Muzi.com News 10057616-34 (muzi.com) His passport described Hillary as an "author-lecturer," and by age 40 his schedule of lecturing and writing meant he had to give up beekeeping "because I was too busy." Muzi.com News 10057616-35 (muzi.com) By that time he was touring, lecturing and fund-raising for the Himalayan Trust in the United States and Europe for three months at a time, speaking at more than 100 venues during a tour. Muzi.com News 10057616-36 (muzi.com) He was known as ready to take risks to achieve his goals, but always had control so that nobody ever died on a Hillary-led expedition. Muzi.com News 10057616-37 (muzi.com) He was at times controversial. He decried what he considered a lack of "honest-to-God morality" in New Zealand politics in the 1960s, and he refused to backtrack when the prime minister demanded he withdraw the comments. Ordinary New Zealanders applauded his integrity. Muzi.com News 10057616-38 (muzi.com) He got into hot water over what became known as his "dash to the Pole" in the 1957-58 Antarctic summer season aboard modified farm tractors while part of a joint British-New Zealand expedition. Muzi.com News 10057616-39 (muzi.com)
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