Paul Andrews SJ explores the legacy of that secular saint, Edmund Hillary, and how such a man’s doubt helps us to see how extraordinary the Incarnation truly is.
As I write this, they are burying Sir Edmund Hillary, giving him a State funeral in Auckland, rather miffed that the British royal family has not sent any member to attend – Paul Henry asked on breakfast TV: What has Charles got to do that stops him coming along? The newsreaders place the funeral as their first item, and are dressed on camera in unaccustomed, formal black. I was happy to be in New Zealand for this occasion. Not many countries have a citizen who was so unequivocally a hero to his compatriots as Ed Hillary. In 2007 a survey found he was New Zealand’s most trusted person. He was, said his friend Dingle, ‘a mirror of the best of us Kiwis’.
Though his picture was on banknotes even while he was alive, fame did not spoil him. After years of uninterrupted praise, he remained unsophisticated and uncorrupted, still speaking in a slow drawl that to some ears sounded like a hick’s. He used to laugh at the cascade of compliments on the 50th anniversary of his conquest of Everest. When interviewed at home he tried to remember one epithet: ‘No, not hero,’ he said. ‘The ah – I always forget the name.’ He called out to his wife upstairs: ‘Jane, what am I?’ She came downstairs and said, matter of fact: ‘An icon.’ ‘An icon!’ he said. ‘I’m certainly not an icon at home.’ ‘No man is an icon to his wife,’ she replied.
The death of Edmund Hillary forces us to think about life. He was a kind of secular saint, a man so admirable in his personality and his life that the media are canonizing him already. He had a miserable, lonely childhood. A gym teacher at school mocked him for his poor physique. As a gangly, craggy-looking late developer, he was so convinced of his unattractive ugliness that when he
fell in love, he lacked the courage to propose, and asked his future mother-in-law to explore the ground for him.
His father, a shell-shocked veteran of the first World War, subscribed to a strict and intimidating religion, a New Age sect called Radiant Light. Ed’s childhood experience of religion involved strong controls, plenty of smacking, and, curiously, a strict pacifism, against which he reacted by joining the NZ air force. He had a mediocre school record, and failed exams for two years at university before dropping out to become a bee-keeper. But at the age of sixteen he had discovered a talent and a passion for climbing high, icy mountains, and it changed him.
His motto was simple: Aim high. Be determined. The way he lived it out made him an inspiring figure, possibly more so for men than for women. The round-shouldered, stooped 12-year-old, whose gym teacher had consigned him to the no-hopers’ group, grew so tall and tough that even among the rugged mountaineers on Everest in 1953, he was the strongest and most energetic. When it came to choosing who would make the final attempt on the summit, the English leader, Sir John Hunt, generously chose a New Zealander, Hillary, and a Sherpa, Tensing, not just for their strength but for their self-discipline and determination.
Hillary did not act the hero, but rather the matter-of-fact Kiwi, as he came down the mountain with the famous greeting to his friend: ‘Well George, we knocked the bastard off.’ In the weeks that followed, he had to sit and listen while everybody praised him, but he said: `I appreciate the sentiments, but I don’t necessarily believe them. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what my abilities are, the sort of person I am, and so I don’t permit really all this hullabaloo to affect me.’
People with Ed’s level of determination, self-discipline, humility and generosity of spirit, have been acclaimed as saints by the church. But even though he is being buried from the Anglican cathedral, he was not a churchman. The Gospel for the service is the Beatitudes, and they fit the man. But he had moved away from the harsh religion of his upbringing. He was asked did he pray in moments of great peril, as when he was stuck on an icy rock face, unable to go up or down: ‘No, I did not pray. I thought: I got myself into this fix, and I’ve got to get myself out of it.’
A turning point came in his fifties, when his wife and eldest daughter died in a plane crash. Ed was devastated and baffled by the loss of the two people he loved most. There are pictures of him pacing the Himalayan runway where he had awaited Louise and Belinda, looking to the mountains for some sort of answer. But he could not find the good news he sought, and went on seeking. For a man who lived a high-risk life, with death only a false footstep away – if he fell into a crevasse or slipped on a glacier – it is remarkable how the experience of loss prostrated him. In the end he retreated from the pain into several years of drink-fuelled depression.
He recovered with the help of his second wife: I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. He did not rest on his laurels. Having climbed Everest and gone to the South Pole and the North Pole, he devoted himself to work for the underdogs of Everest, the Sherpas. Over the years he helped them by funding and constructing, often with his own huge hands, twenty-seven schools, two hospitals, twelve medical centres, many bridges and roads, and planting a million trees.
We can have no doubt that such a good man is now with the Lord who created him. He came to believe that there must be a supreme intelligence behind all the complexity of creation: But whether that intelligence is the slightest bit interested in some little person down here on earth, I have considerable doubts. These words, from a person of such greatness, give me a sense of how extraordinary, how unexpected, is the good news of the Gospel. God’s love for us, shown in Jesus’ person and life, is a mystery and a marvel, as the Messenger reminds us every month.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (July 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
