His Final Summit

Statue of Sir Edmund Hillary, with Everest in background

Life in our century doesn't offer many heroes. Men's greatest achievements seem soon tarnished by rumors of steroids, bribes, gambling scandals, ghost-written books, domestic violence. Apparent heroes end up on inane talk shows, revealing themselves to be self-centered jerks.

But today, a true hero died.

Sir Edmund Hillary has passed away at the age of 88. On May 29, 1953, he and his Sherpa companion Tenzing Norgay were the first human beings ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

In 1953, Everest was a remote peak in an inaccessible kingdom. Fat cat businessmen couldn't pay $60,000 -- or any price at all -- to be hauled up the mountain by guides, or to drag themselves up by use of fixed ropes. Helicopters didn't fly to base camp with fresh supplies. Simply reaching what is now "Everest Base Camp" required a major expedition.

Major corporations did not sponsor climbs. Climbers did not wear company logos. Climbers did not keep in touch with their families by radio, and certainly not by email. The Kingdom of Nepal limited access to the area to one expedition per year. Sir Edmund, then a simple New Zealand beekeeper, made his climb as part of an official expedition by the British Royal Geographical Society. He climbed the final stretch to the summit, from 27,900 feet, together with Tenzing Norgay, giving his name to the "Hillary step," a 40-foot cliff that every summiteer must negotiate just before the summit.

Word of his triumph reached London during the coronation ceremonies for Queen Elizabeth II. His triumph was viewed as a triumph for the entire British Commonwealth and Empire.

The newspapers will be full of the story tomorrow, as will the newsmagazines. I won't try to tell their story here. Although the expedition was a team effort, Sir Edmund's success was also celebrated as a victory for the individual spirit, as inspiring in its way as the later American moon landing was as a national endeavor. Sir Edmund himself became a celebrity and a hero.

But, for me, he remains a hero because of the way he spent his remaining 54 years of life.

He never forgot that his climb had been possible only because of his Sherpa support. In an era when European supremacy was often taken for granted, he never revealed, at least as long as Tenzing Norgay remained alive, which climber first set foot on the summit -- as if who was "first" even mattered. He saw and he was moved by the deep spirituality and the harmony with nature of the Sherpa people. He also saw, and was moved, by the Sherpas' material poverty, and their lack of education and health care. Although he served for a time as New Zealand's ambassador to India (and Nepal), he devoted much of his remaining life to raising money for schools and hospitals in the Khumbu region, and to preserving the Khumbu's environment from degradation by climbers and trekkers.

Today, anyone who visits the Khumbu (the Everest region populated by the Sherpa people) will encounter the schools and the medical facilities made possible by Sir Edmund's efforts. Visitors will meet the Sherpa people -- still sturdy, hard-working and poor -- but now healthier and with more hope for the future than they could have anticipated but for his efforts.

"I cannot do everything, but I can do something." Sir Edmund's life exemplifies the spirit behind that saying. At 88, he has now climbed his final summit. He has achieved his ultimate success. He lived, and he has died, a hero.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE (1-12-08): The following anecdote is from this week's Time Magazine. Edmund Hillary's life is a beacon of sanity and selflessness in contrast to everything that is wrong about today's "celebrities."

"I never deny the fact that I think I did pretty well on Everest," he [Sir Edmund] told a reporter in 1992. "But I was not the heroic figure the media and the public made me out to be."

Once, while resting on a rock during a short trek in Nepal with friend and film director Michael Dillon, an American walker stopped and showed Hillary how to hold an ice-axe. "Hillary listened and thanked him, but said nothing else," remembers Dillon. "The American went away without any idea whom he had spoken to." The first man to stand on top of the world didn't see himself as a hero. Others always will.