Sir Ed

Sir Edmund Hillary died today.

I had the privilege of having dinner with Sir Edmund (along with a few dozen other people, admittedly – it’s not like Sir Ed and I went out to Subway for a foot-long meatball sandwich) about a year ago – he told stories of his Everest climb, and spoke a lot about the conquering of adversity in general.

He was an excellent speaker but even a year ago seemed physically quite frail. His health was not good. There were a lot of people standing very close to him[1], with the air of people prepared to catch him if he should fall. I got the impression that he disliked the requirement for those people to have to be there, and I also got the impression that he’d rather be wearing a pack and climbing another mountain than wearing a tux and having another damn dinner. And I definitely don’t think he wanted people to remember him as an amusing after dinner speaker.

Luckily, this will not happen – he’ll be remembered, forever, as the first dude there was to stand on the highest place there is. Awesome.

[1] Yes, Sir Ed has a posse.