Tributes Flow For Sir Ed
14 Jan 2008
Tributes are flowing in from around the world for Sir Edmund Hillary who has died at the age of 88.
Sherpas are grieving for themselves and for New Zealanders according to Tashi Tenzing, the eldest grandson of Tenzing Norgay.
"The New Zealand people are very sad today, but they should be happy, they have a big man with a very big heart who has not inspired just the people of New Zealand, but the Sherpas and the people around the world," Tashi Tenzing told Fairfax Media from the Himalayas.
"We feel we have lost a great hero, a godfather for all the Sherpas."
Tashi said Sir Edmund is remembered in all the schools and hospitals of which many Sir Edmund helped to build.
"For me I see Sir Edmund as a great hero. That is what heroes are all made of. Not climbing mountains. You can climb the top mountains and that is a great feat. But coming back down and putting back into his people, and the friendship he has made, well that is a great a loss for our people."
Hillary Remembered in Antartica
In a small, wooden chapel overlooking the Antarctic sea ice, about 100 mourners shared a special memorial service for Sir Edmund Hillary.
The stained glass windows in the Chapel of the Snows provided the perfect backdrop for the celebration to honour Hillary's 50 years of involvement in Antarctica. Hillary's determination, humility and generosity were recurring themes.
"It's the common denominator to this man, and I think everybody knows it," Scott Base co-ordinator Yvonne Boesterling said after the service.
Hillary set up Scott Base in Antarctica in 1957 and in January 1958 led the first party to reach the South Pole by land since 1912, driving a modified Ferguson tractor.
He made repeated visits to the Ice, the latest in January last year, when he stayed in a small A-frame hut to celebrate the base's 50th anniversary.
Everest Journalist Remembers
The first journalist to record Sir Edmund Hillary's historic conquer of Mt Everest says she was moved to tears on hearing of his death. James Morris (now Jan after a sex change operation in 1972) has told New Zealand's Sunday Star Times newspaper she had learned Sir Ed had died from fellow climber George Band who rang and woke her up. Since then she had scores of phone calls and requests for interviews from media in Britain and United States.
Morris said a special atmosphere surrounded Sir Ed. "It was a culture that he represented. I realised I was more or less in tears." She said the most moving aspect of his "wonderful life" was his humanitarian contribution. "In the end, he repaid a debt to the country that made him famous by all those things he did in Nepal. I think he will be more remembered for that than for climbing Everest."
"Nobody else was quite like Ed in the way in which he repaid that debt and the way he bore his fame. It really did not affect him. He did not change. It seems to me he was exactly the same when he was one of the most famous men in the world as when he was a beekeeper."
In 1953, Morris described Hillary as: "Huge and cheerful, his movement not so much graceful as unshakably assured, his energy almost demonic. He had a tremendous, bursting, elemental, infectious, glorious vitality about him, like some bright, burly diesel express pounding across America."
Sir Edmund was godfather to Henry, one of Morris' five children, and she had caught up with him at many climbers' reunions over the decades. She said Band and other members of the expedition whom she had spoken to were all saddened at Sir Ed's death. "It's a cliche but it's the end of an era. For me, anyway, it's another world that has ended with him."
Meanwhile, details of the state funeral for Sir Edmund Hillary, scheduled to be held at St Mary's Church in Parnell, Auckland, on January 22, will be decided in the coming days. It is expected to be New Zealand's largest ever funeral.
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