When I woke yesterday morning the weather was beautiful, the air was still as though it was in waiting, the sun shone. I wanted to watch Sir Ed's funeral starting at 11am so I got my jobs done quickly and "scooted" to the supermarket for the week's groceries meeting my neighbour intent on the same thing. It was 26 degrees Celsius already.
It has been so hot and so dry this last month that the backyard lawn is bleached white now. Clouds mostly seem to travel over Canterbury choosing to select other areas in New Zealand to drop their moisture laden hold so that the promised rain continuously fails materialise or else it is so light that it just evaporates. An aerial shot of Canterbury on the news last night showed the whole province the same colour as my lawn.
So it was an odd thing that, just as his state funeral got underway at St Mary's in Auckland, down here in Oxford it began to rain...
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Fresh with all the emotion from the death of Sir Edmund Hillary there seems to be a desire about to "do something" to honour him. Naturally most of the suggestions seem to be about one off ideas that won't infringe too much on the budget or the time of most people. For example the Close Up programme on TV One ran a poll asking if people thought we should change the name of Aoraki/Mt Cook to Mt Hillary, never mind that the Maori name was replaced on the mountain as part of a Waitangi Tribunal Settlement. No wonder many Maori comment they wouldn't trust Pakeha as far as they could throw them.
Renaming sheds down at the Antarctic seems to be another clever idea, (hey, its cheap at least), despite the fact that Sir Ed is publicly on record stating that he didn't want someone else's name removed from anything be it mountain or shed in favour of his name. "No problem", says another bright spark, "next time we build a new shed down there we can name it the Sir Edmund Hillary Shed."
We actually have a lot of things, schools and trusts etc, named after him already, Sir Ed was never above lending his name for a good cause if it would help. And he has already been gracing our five dollar bill for the last fifteen years, (people used to get him to sign them).
There is even a statue of him already up at Arthurs Pass despite the fact that he did not want to be made into a statue.
The thing is that the answer to how to honour Sir Ed is staring us all in the face, shouting itself from the mountain tops even, the problem is that it may demand more from us than a one off payment for the sculptor and materials or the name board on a shed.
The Himalayan Trust Author Mary Hobbs, who with husband Charlie accompanied Hillary on one of his last trips to Nepal and chronicled his work for the Himalayan Trust, said he was adamant that it was his philanthropic work in the Himalaya that he wanted to remain the focus after his death.
"I know Ed would want the attention to be on his trust projects," she said. "Ed told us he just wanted his work in the Himalayas to be continued."
Jim O'Carroll concurs. He said he believed Hillary would be more impressed by average Kiwis donating a day, or the equivalent wages, for the betterment of those less privileged. "I believe we should build a mountain of donated $5 bills and use them to sustain the Himalayan Trust indefinitely," he said.
The Himalayan Trust was formed as a direct result from Sir Ed's contact and ensuing friendships with the Sherpa communities. This was a time when there had still been very little contact with the outside world by the Sherpas', they were very poor people living in a medieval manner, scratching a living from their mountains. When Sir Ed asked them what they wanted or needed, they said "our children have eyes but are blind". They asked for a school.
So in 1961 Sir Ed fundraised for and then built the first permanent school in the Mount Everest region. It was a success. From there came an overwhelming flood of requests from other Sherpa villages in the Khumbu area. Undaunted, Sir Edmund took up the challenge.
Working in the Sherpa Communities became his life's most important work. Together with the help of his family and New Zealand mountaineering friends he formed the Himalayan Trust to assist with the fund-raising and supervision of the new projects.
More than forty years later the Trust has been responsible for building and maintaining twenty-six schools, two hospitals, twelve medical clinics, three airfields and many bridges and fresh water pipelines. During this time further Himalayan Trust foundations in USA, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany were established by Sir Edmund.
Teacher training is also an important aspect of the foundation's work.
New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clarke, has said the Government will review the $290,000 annual aid grant given to the Himalayan Trust set up in 1965 to build and run schools and hospitals and help development among the Sherpa in Nepal.
"Everyone knows Ed himself was very dismissive of formal memorials. He didn't want great statues", she said. "What he wanted was his work to live on."
In 2003, the Government increased the grants from about $40,000 to $290,000 a year to mark the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's and Tenzing Norgay's ascent of Mount Everest.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said she would not be drawn into debate over memorials so soon after his death.
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