A Personal Hero Falls

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mt. Everest, died of heart failure yesterday at 88. Long known more for adventures than his philanthropy. He reached the top of the highest point in the world and then touched each pole of the planet. Hillary lead a long life of adventure, was knighted by the Queen of England and and got his face on the New Zealand $5 bill, where is was a native. Along the way he eschewed the hype and self-huckstering that is the character of many adventurers of today. Instead of long book tours and the lecture circuit, this simple man, with definite opinions, lived his life as a bee-keeper, the same profession of his father.

I learned of Sir Edmund during a joint mission with some British soldiers. We were all at some run down joint and the mission was to get piss drunk before going out on our separate operations. I lost my favorite knife that night for the sake of 'cross-cultural promotion'. He got my knife and whatever he gave me is lost to my memory. I really loved that Gerber Mark 2...oh well. Anyway, I was so wrapped up in my own jingoism of American heroes and literature that this figure they described cut a wide schism in my myopic view of icons and I dived greatly into European history.

I started reading true histories about Hillary and Shackleton and put down the fiction of Mark Twain and James Fenimore Cooper books by Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne. All because one drunk night while a bunch of soldiers from different countries laughed together, taunted each other and tried to put our self danger away for a couple hours by describing the dangers others willingly put themselves into in the name of exploration, instead of combat.

In my mind that night the name Sir Edmund Hillary made me appreciate a bigger world.