Edmund Hillary--A Biography

by Michael Gill

  Peter still had a second ascent of the South Col route on Everest ahead of him, but K2 was his last climb involving exceptional risk. In March 1996 he married Yvonne Oomen on the lawn at 278a Remuera Road. They have two children, Alexander and Lily, and Peter now makes his living as a speaker and a guide on trips to the Antarctic and Himalayas.

  Handing over to the Sherpas

  Ed used the early years of the 1990s to plan for a future when he would no longer be here. The aim of any NGO in a developing country is not to do their work for them but to find and develop local staff to take over. In 1987 Ed had appointed a Sherpa to the position of administrative officer at the Himalayan Trust office at Dilli Bazaar in Kathmandu. This was Ang Rita, born in Khumjung, and one of a trio of exceptionally bright pupils from the school’s early intakes who were given full scholarships for their secondary education in Kathmandu and tertiary education outside Nepal. Ang Rita had wanted to become a doctor, but the only medical school with a place available was in politically volatile Myanmar, where strikes forced him to return to Nepal and into jobs working in tourist hotels. During the early years, the Kathmandu administration of the Himalayan Trust had been handled by American Liz Hawley, famous among other things for her database in which she enters the names of climbers in Nepal and the peaks they have climbed. In 1987 Ang Rita became a full-time employee of the Trust and over a period of years took over from Liz all the work in Kathmandu.

  But Kathmandu and Solukhumbu were different places, and for his link to the grass roots of what was happening in the villages Ed relied on Mingma Tsering, his sardar since 1963, the commander-in-chief of his operations in the villages, the foreman on his building sites, and his adviser on the work he did there. Mingma was endlessly capable, hard-working and loyal, and despite his illiteracy was the best partner Ed could have had. He lived in Khunde, not Kathmandu, so knew what was happening at ground level. Ed had a deep affection for him. When Mingma died in 1993, Ed lost not only an adviser but an essential friend and a connection to the people and villages of the area where they worked.

  Mingma’s death brought home to Ed the need for planning to continue the work of his Trust. So in 1994 he organised in Auckland a plenary meeting of the principal donors, senior Sherpas and Trust members to discuss what projects should be planned for the next decade and how to fund them. Richard Blum, chair of his American Himalayan Foundation, came from San Francisco; Zeke O’Connor of the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation came from Toronto, George and Mary Lowe from the Himalayan Trust UK, Ingrid Versen from the Sir Edmund Hillary Stiftung in Bavaria, and Larry Witherbee from the Hillary Foundation of Chicago. All gave generous pledges of support for the next eight years, and in 2002 would promise funds for a further 10 years. During the 40 years from 1974 to 2014, this group would contribute US$12 million. Together with US$6 million from New Zealand, donations to the Trust totalled $18 million over that period. It was a tribute to the unique impact of Ed’s development programmes since the first school was built in Khumjung in 1961.

  Education had been strikingly successful in the way it had helped Sherpas prosper in the trekking business. They became guides, sardars, managers and owners of trekking companies, even of helicopters and small planes. Others built tea houses, small lodges and comfortable hotels with en suite bathrooms. The schools were less successful, however, in inspiring local people to take up teaching, a profession that was more part of the upbringing of the Brahmin caste of Hindu Nepal. The better teachers of whatever caste preferred to live in the big city, leaving the less well trained to work in the hills. Recognising the need for better training of teachers in his schools, Ed asked Christchurch educationist Jim Strang to set up a teacher training programme. Jim established a Nepali NGO, REED, which currently employs more than 30 trainers working in Solukhumbu and Taplejung, with financial support from Australian and UK NGOs as well as the Himalayan Trust. The schools grew bigger. Secondary classes were added, with hostels for pupils from more distant villages. Scholarships were provided for the best students to go to university in Kathmandu. Trekkers often helped by funding individual students they had met, some of whom were accepted into Western universities. A significant Sherpa diaspora developed, particularly in the United States.

  By the 1970s the first alarm bells were ringing about the environmental damage being caused by the influx of trekkers and mountaineers who at night liked to sit around a fire fuelled by slow-growing sub-alpine juniper bushes. Working alongside the Nepal Government, Ed encouraged the establishment of the Sagarmatha National Park which created and enforced rules about cutting firewood. For six years, from 1975 to 1981, New Zealand funded a succession of full-time Head Wardens based in Namche as advisers until Nepalis took over in 1982.3 These included Mingma Norbu and Lhakpa Norbu who were educated at Khumjung School and subsequently Lincoln University in New Zealand. Although the emphasis was on preservation of existing forest cover, forest nurseries funded by Canada were set up for reforestation by planting out fir, pine, juniper and rhododendron seedlings.

  An important environmental project was the Austrian hydroelectric installation at Thame, which generated 620kw when it came online in 1994, and has been recently upgraded. It supplies power to Thame, Namche, Khunde and Khumjung, where food is cooked by electricity; cafes, restaurants and school homework continue after dark; and local trees can grow undisturbed.

  Ed’s medical projects were placed completely in the hands of Sherpas after being run for many years by volunteers from New Zealand and Canada. Of his two hospitals, Khunde was taken over by Dr Kami Temba of Thame in 2002, while Dr Mingmar Gyelzen had become medical superintendent of Phaplu Hospital in 1982. They treated the simple infections that might otherwise kill young people; they provided an obstetric service and family planning; they set broken bones and implemented the national immunisation programme. Health-care expenditure follows the law of diminishing returns. Care at Khunde and Phaplu is at the most basic end of the spectrum, where remarkable results can be achieved with a small budget. Before 1970, florid, untreated disease was visible throughout the hill country of Nepal, but by the turn of the century a well-run Health Department had achieved many of its goals, assisted by programmes such as those of the Himalayan Trust.

  Mingmar Gyelzen left Phaplu in 2006 to work in the Government of Nepal’s Health Department and went on to become its director-general – a remarkable achievement. In 2014 Mingmar’s nephew Dr Mingma Chhiring followed in his uncle’s footsteps to become the resident surgeon at Phaplu on a salary funded by the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Germany.

  Fame and more honours

  These development projects received further widespread recognition for Ed in the unexpected form of honorary doctorates – a source of amusement as well as pleasure for someone who had not bonded with academia during his two years at Auckland University. He also became the first living New Zealander to have his image on a banknote, the five-dollar note, first issued in 1992 with a 1950s profile photo of a tousled Hillary in the mountains. During his remaining 16 years Ed would sign many thousands of these notes, and some Sherpas would interpret this as evidence of his wealth.

  Another important recognition of his achievements came in April 1995 when Ed and June were at the Sherpa village of Junbesi, located in pine forest three hours’ walk above Phaplu. Modern facilities were limited, but they had a telephone link which one day came to life with a request to speak to Sir Edmund Hillary. It was the British Ambassador on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, asking that Ed accept the Knightly Order of the Garter. It was not the sort of thing one expects in Junbesi. Of the 19 other Knights of the Garter, one was John Hunt, who had been inducted into the order in 1979. Resolute republicans sometimes claim that Ed disliked his knighthoods, but his son and daughter both give evidence that he was fond of his KBE and just loved being a Knight of the Garter – it was a final recognition not only of the aura of the Everest expedition but also of his continuing efforts to help the people of his much-loved Nepal. Ed wore the regal
ia well. His craggy features were framed by the wide-brimmed, black velvet hat with its ostrich plume; his large frame swathed in the dark-blue mantle with its rich edgings and decorations and the outsize insignia of the Garter with its Cross of Saint George.

  He now required a Coat of Arms. The first version, drawn by a New Zealand designer, was wry and affectionate: a modest, somewhat harassed kiwi with an ice-axe in his half-raised claw stands atop a helmeted knight whose elbow is draped nonchalantly over a shield displaying three mountain peaks and Sherpa prayer wheels. The shield is held by the extended flippers of two flanking emperor penguins, and the motto on the flowing scroll on which the penguins stand states the strongest of Ed’s personal beliefs, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win.

  The final version was lighter on humour. The kiwi had become larger and lost some of his proletarian personality; the nonchalant knight had been deleted; the noble emperor penguins had been replaced by two dumpy Fiordland crested penguins; Nothing Venture, Nothing Win had lost its flowing ribbon to enter a linear rectangle; and the Garter motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense,4 had been added to its ribbon. The prayer wheels on the escutcheon were now smaller than the mountain, which was, after all, Mt Everest. The honour was, nevertheless, something Ed had reason to be proud of. He was only the second New Zealander, after Sir Keith Holyoake, to become a Knight of the Garter.

  Now into his seventies, Ed might have thought he would be less in the public eye. But if anything the adulation increased as the realisation dawned that he, a living treasure, would not live forever. In 1991 NZTV had made its first foray into the heights of Solukhumbu to photograph Sir Ed on his Himalayan home territory. The project was abbreviated when Ed suffered from a severe bout of altitude sickness, but not before three TV programmes had been completed and scriptwriter Tom Scott was introduced to the Hillary story. Tom was back in 1996 directing a more extended treatment of Ed’s life. The result was a four-part television series with the title View from the Top. There was some synergy here between the TV series and Ed’s last autobiography, View from the Summit, published in 1999, which was partly a collaboration with Tom Scott. Ed acknowledged him in the book as ‘a friend of long-standing whose research has ensured that many anecdotes and stories I might have overlooked or never seen are incorporated in this narrative’.

  Ed also paid generous tribute to June: ‘Perhaps most important of all has been my wife, June, who read every word and made sure the story was correctly presented, as nobody knows more about my life than she does.’

  A third acknowledgment went to George Greenfield, Ed’s literary agent for more than 40 years, who had once again secured excellent contracts from English, American and German publishers. On this occasion George, now over 80 but still as sharp as ever, included a proviso in his will that his share of the earnings from View from the Summit should revert to Ed on his death, of which he seemed to feel a premonition. ‘A new and rather sombre point has struck me,’ he wrote in April 2000. ‘I’ve just been reading Andre Deutsch’s obituary and, dammit, he is – or was – eight months younger than me!’5 Less than a month later George died of a heart attack, and Ed had lost another old and valued friend.

  View from the Summit rose quickly up the bestseller lists in the UK, USA and New Zealand, and the German rights were sold for NZ$130,000. Reviews were favourable, though some regretted a lost opportunity for more reflection and more about the people in his life. ‘Few women feature, Louise Hillary [being] the most significant Character in Absentia … The splendid June Mulgrew [is] another woman whose stature is established by implication rather than indication …’6 Letters show that editors Maggie Body and Joanna Goldsworthy tried to persuade Ed to be more discursive, but he admitted that ‘my creative instinct is fading fast’. He was feeling old, and at times it showed. Only UK reviewers commented specifically on the Antarctic chapters, to which Ed gave much space. The Spectator quoted Ed’s belief that Tenzing should have been knighted as ‘endearing proof that at the age of 80 the New Zealander still does not understand the British caste system’.7 And Jan Morris, who preferred the younger Hillary she knew in 1953, ‘wishes that just occasionally the old hero would lose a dispute, or a New Zealander would prove less resilient, adaptable and informal than a Briton …’8 But overall the book came out with a strong recommendation.

  The last years

  Ed entered his ninth and last decade in less than perfect health, but he got by. Important people died: the much-loved John Hunt in 1998 at the age of 88, and Bunny Fuchs, tough to the end, a year later at 91.

  Ed accepted invitations to record the narrations for two symphonic works: Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, which has optional lines of spoken words; and Douglas Lilburn’s Landfall in Unknown Seas whose words, written by Allen Curnow, applied equally to twelfthcentury Māori, the seventeenth-century Abel Tasman and eighteenth-century James Cook:

  Simply by sailing in a new direction

  You could enlarge the world.

  You picked your captain,

  Keen on discoveries, tough enough to make them.

  They were words Ed could identify with and he spoke them well.

  In 2004 Ed’s brother Rex died at 83, victim of a lifetime of cigarette-smoking. He had always been Ed’s hardest-working and most loyal helper on building projects in Nepal. At home, Betty Joplin, Ed’s personal secretary and a close friend of Louise, retired after nearly 50 years’ service. She recalls:

  By the time I resigned in 2006 he couldn’t remember anything recent though his memories of Everest and the Antarctic were very clear when people called. When I’d ask him about something he’d just say, ‘I can’t remember. You work it out Betty.’ If you put a cheque in front of him he’d just sign it without question. But there came a time when his memory was so faded I couldn’t do anything for him.9

  Ed’s visits to Canada, the US and UK tailed off as the years went by but he remained in demand as a speaker. He had always had a remarkable ability to rise to occasions and it was a skill he never lost. His agent said that though he no longer spent time on speeches, it hardly mattered. In New Zealand at least, people just wanted to spend time in the same room with him. This was darshan in a southern hemisphere setting.

  In 2006 Ed was awarded his fifth honorary doctorate, this one from the University of Waikato for his work in education, the environment and humanitarian causes. A year later he was flown again to the Antarctic, this time for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Scott Base, accompanied by Prime Minister Helen Clark who had become a personal friend.

  His brief visits to Khunde Hospital and Khumjung School, with Everest in view, continued each May. Early in 2007 he said, ‘I would hate to think I would never see Khumbu again,’ but in Kathmandu that year it was decided the now-usual trip was too much of a risk, and the helicopter took off without him. It seemed an odd inversion that after a lifetime of risk-taking, this was no longer acceptable as the end approached.

  As 2007 wore on, he spent more and more time in his bed. Visits to Auckland Hospital became more frequent, and by the end of the year local TV producers were assembling commemorative film from their archives.

  The end came on the morning of 11 January 2008 when he died suddenly just before he was due to leave hospital. For the 11 days leading up to the State Funeral on 22 January, the people of New Zealand remembered their greatest, most-loved and most-admired fellow citizen with a mixture of affection, grief and pride. The media was filled with stories and images of the life of Sir Edmund Hillary. Tributes flowed in from around the globe. For 24 hours prior to the funeral, the casket lay in state in Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral to allow people to pay their last respects. The bright sun of a fine summer day gave way to mist and a drizzling rain. ‘Rangi is weeping,’ Māori said. All that day a queue of people filed into the cathedral to touch the casket and think of the man who so many felt they had known since 29 May 1953. Long after midnight, people old and young were still arriving to join the line stretching down the ro
ad. The New Zealand Herald noted, ‘As they stood in the damp night, with the pale street lighting blurred by the misty rain, the mood was anything but sombre. There was an abiding sense of community among complete strangers who chatted while they waited.’10

  During the funeral service, the drizzle swelled to a tropical downpour, beating on the roof as the traditional words of the Anglican funeral service and the speeches of close family and friends were spoken at the last farewell.

  Among overseas speakers at the New Zealand Alpine Club’s memorial gathering after the funeral, none had known Ed longer than Jan Morris. She said of the famous climb:

  Almost the moment the news reached the world at large it entered the realm of allegory.

  It was allegorical in many senses. It was symbolically a last earthly adventure before humanity’s explorers went off into space. It was a final flourish of the British Empire. The news arrived in London on the morning when the new queen, Elizabeth II, was being crowned …

  In the end Ed repaid a debt to the country that made him famous by all those things he did in Nepal.

  You in New Zealand are lucky that your greatest hero is great because he is good.11

  Epilogue

  The mystery in Ed’s life is not just how he came to achieve fame as one of the two men to make the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain, but also how he retained that fame and even increased it. No one who knew Ed Hillary during the first 30 years of his life would have predicted that great fame lay ahead, yet those years were a necessary part of his story. Ed inherited a powerful work ethic and stubborn determination from his father. Percy’s war experience at Gallipoli and the economic destructiveness of the 1930s had left him with uncompromising ideological certainties. The purpose of life was to work with diligence and ingenuity. And in hard times – and they didn’t get much harder than the Great Depression of 1930–35 – it was one’s duty to help those more in need than oneself. In the event of war, an evil in itself, Percy was equally certain that one had a moral duty to be a conscientious objector. Percy’s strict code of ethics was difficult for others to live by, but Ed admired his father’s ‘moral courage – he would battle fiercely against society or the powers-that-be on a matter of principle’.1 The Labour politicians of 1935–40 were heroes in the prewar Hillary household and Ed remained, by upbringing and instinct, on the political left.