Sir Edmund Hillary: EcoHumanitarian -A Video

There is a little-known side to the life of Sir Edmund Hillary, the lanky New Zealand mountaineer and explorer who with Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa guide, won worldwide acclaim in 1953 by becoming the first to scale the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest. Hillary died last week at age 88.

Nepal is one of the world's poorest nations, with an infant mortality rate nearly 13 times that of the United States.

In the remote mountain villages, human waste and yak dung pollute the water supply. But not in the Sherpa village of Khumjung, the jumping off point for climbs of the great mountain at 12,475', because Sir Edmund gave the villagers a safe clean-water system. There is also a Sir Edmund school in Khumjung completed in 1961, and a Sir Edmund Hillary medical clinic in the neighboring village of Khunde.

The origins of the Khumjung School, the first of Sir Edmund's philanthropic efforts in Nepal, date back to 1960. Sir Edmund, making his first return visit since the 1953 expedition, embarked on a quixotic search for evidence of the legendary Yeti (abominable snowman). The villagers of Khumjung claimed to have a Yeti scalp in their possession. As part of a bargain with the villagers, who allowed Sir Edmund to borrow their prize for testing in America, he agreed to secure the funds to build them a school. The scalp turned out to be a fake.

The Himalayan Trust, The charitable organization Sir Edmund founded, raised funds for more than two dozen additional schools in the Solu-Khumbu region, plus clinics, hospitals, bridges, airfields, and projects promoting clean water and reforestation.

On a recent visit to Everest, Maurice Isserman who teaches history at Hamilton College, described his encounter with the Sir Edmund legend in the Christain Science Monitor. Isserman the author, with Stewart Weaver, of the forthcoming book, "Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes."

"Every village we visited last summer had pictures and posters of Sir Edmund (locals called him "Sir Ed"), in teahouses, trekking lodges, and wayside stores. But there is one photographic image of Sir Edmund you will never see, in Nepal or anywhere else, and that is one of him standing atop Mount Everest. And that is because it doesn't exist.

"Sir Edmund brought a camera with him that day in 1953 to the summit and took a photo of his Sherpa companion, Tenzing Norgay, holding his ice ax aloft in a triumphant gesture. That photo was featured on the cover of Life magazine and became one of the iconic images of the 20th century. Sir Edmund would write in "High Adventure," his account of the expedition, that he did not ask Tenzing to take his photograph because "as far as I knew, he had never taken one before and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how."

Isserman sums up his take on Hillary's character:

"I think the truth is that Sir Edmund, who fully expected to go back to the family business of beekeeping when he got back from Everest, didn't care whether his moment of glory was recorded. He was a strong, ambitious climber, and he had the drive to make it to the top. But he was also a simple, uncomplicated, and deeply modest man. And in the years that followed his day on the top of the world, he went on to do a lot of good."

Posted by Casey Kazan. Associated Press photo of Hillary and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay.

Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0114/p09s01-coop.html?page=2

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