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A few days after his triumphant ascent of Mount Everest with
Tenzing Norgay, Ed Hillary received word that Queen Elizabeth
planned to make him Sir Edmund. He was taken aback. "Oh, I found
it difficult," he recalls now. "I didn't feel I was the ideal
sort of person who should have a title." For one thing, he couldn't
see strolling around his hometown of Papakura, New Zealand,
in his old work clothes, a knight commander of the Order of
the British Empire. "My God," he remembers saying to himself,
"I'll have to buy a new pair of overalls."
Here
was a new kind of hero, a tall, rangy beekeeper from the fringes
of the empire. One of only two Kiwis on the 1953 Everest expedition—his
pal George Lowe was the other—he may have lacked the social
graces of his eight English climbing partners. But he more than
made up for it with strength and tenacity. Having learned to
climb in New Zealand's Southern Alps in the winter (the off-season
for bees), Hillary was as bold on ice and snow as anyone on
the team. And he and Tenzing had made it to the top.
Ed's younger brother, Rex, with whom he shared the beekeeping
business, met him in London for the July ceremony at which Ed,
Tenzing, and Col. John Hunt, the expedition leader, were to
be honored. It followed a garden party at Buckingham Palace,
where 7,500 guests in summer frocks and morning coats huddled
under umbrellas in the rain. "We were ushered into this room
by the staff," Rex remembers. "They were probably lords and
ladies and God-knows-what. Then the Queen came in. She was very
young and pretty in those days." Ed kneeled on a stool, Elizabeth
touched him lightly on both shoulders with a small sword and
said, "Arise, Sir Edmund." Staying in Britain for weeks of champagne
toasts, Hillary was introduced to his first hangover.
Flush
with the glow of celebrity, the newly knighted climber stopped
off in Sydney on his way back to Auckland to court his future
wife, Louise Rose, who was studying at the Sydney Conservatorium
of Music. He balked at asking for her hand, however. "I was
certainly not a ladies' man," he admits. "I was just terrified
at the thought of proposing. Fortunately, my future mother-in-law
was a very strong lady, and she didn't have any qualms about
bringing it up with Louise." So the conqueror of Everest took
a backseat while Louise's mother popped the question to her
over the telephone from their home in Auckland.
In
the years that followed, Hillary led expeditions on first ascents
of several Himalayan peaks, including Baruntse (23,517 feet/7,168
meters), Chago (22,615 feet/6,893 feet), and Pethangtse (22,106
feet/6,738 meters), drove modified farm tractors to the South
Pole in support of a British scientific party crossing Antarctica,
went in search of the mythical yeti in Nepal, and wrote books
about his adventures. Having given up beekeeping, he signed
on as a camping consultant to Sears in 1963, testing new tent
designs on vacations with Louise and their three kids, Peter,
Sarah, and the youngest, Belinda.
Catastrophe
struck in 1975, when a small plane carrying Louise and Belinda
crashed and burned shortly after takeoff from Kathmandu. The
two were on their way to join Sir Edmund in the village of Phaphlu,
where he and Rex were building a hospital with local Sherpas
and volunteers. "Ed was thunderstruck," says Rex. "It was so
damn sad." It took many years for Sir Edmund to recover, but
he took some comfort in the physical labor of his aid projects
in the Everest region.
Those
projects—to build schools, hospitals, bridges, and other improvements
in Sherpa villages—grew out of Hillary's affection for the mountain
people. "Ed's the sort of person who, if he's asked to do something
and he can't think of a reason not to, he'll go ahead and do
it," says Jim Wilson, a longtime friend from New Zealand. To
help fund this private aid program, Hillary and several buddies
created the Himalayan Trust, which continues to this day.
In 1989, at the age of 70, Sir Edmund married June Mulgrew.
Today many Sherpas in the Everest region consider them both
to be part of their families. A few years ago at a banquet in
the village of Khumjung, Sir Edmund told his Sherpa friends
that for June and him, coming back was like coming home. "When
he said that, all the old people had tears in their eyes," says
lifelong resident Doma Chamji, in part because they knew Hillary
was increasingly sensitive to altitude. Each visit to the village
at 12,300 feet (3,700 meters) might be his last.
Even now, at 83, with his trademark bushy eyebrows, white sideburns,
and longish flyaway hair, Sir Edmund is still frequently called
upon to be the hero of Everest—whether he's cutting an Everest-shaped
cake at the Auckland Museum or giving a pep talk to New Zealand's
national rugby team, the All Blacks. "The thing that amazes
me, in a way, is that it all keeps going," he says. "But I think
I have a clear idea why. I think a lot of people rather like
the fact that I haven't just climbed mountains but also built
schools, hospitals, and all the rest of it. So in a way I've
given back to the people all the help they gave me on the mountain."
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