Sir Edmund Hillary
Feature
No ordinary bloke
by Paul Little
We like our heroes to be diffident and self-deprecating, and so atypical New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary played along.
“Getting your face on paper money – that’s the big time,” the ghost of Abraham Lincoln points out to a deceased US president not accorded the honour, in an old National Lampoon joke.
If dead presidents don’t automatically get their faces on banknotes, living mountain climbers do even less so. Sir Ed Hillary was as famous as it is possible to be. And he and we have struggled with that ever since he came down from the mountain wondering if his feat would be sufficient grounds for the New Zealand Alpine Club to put on a dinner for him.
One statement of his was repeated over and over across the media between his death and his funeral: “In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed.”
With respect, and apart from that last clause – rubbish.
But he had to say that, didn’t he? Because we are only comfortable with the diffident and self-deprecating, with “average … modest … rather”.
Ed Hillary was a winner, albeit not, apparently, a born one; his unremarkable childhood gave no hint of the ambition that was unlocked the first time he climbed a mountain and that drove the lifetime of adventure that followed. To do what he did, with such a background, requires a more than robust ego, a firm belief in self and a determination to take others with him rather than follow anyone’s lead. Far from being ordinary, he meets my dictionary’s definition of an eccentric: “a person whose behaviour is habitually unusual”.
This side of Ed was downplayed in many of the encomia following his death; ego and determination go against the national egalitarian grain. But there’s little public evidence that he was particularly egalitarian. He obviously believed in a fair go for everyone – but he most admired those who made the most of their opportunities. He equally obviously had a heart as big as the Himalayas where underdogs were concerned – but that’s not particularly egalitarian.
To counter this, it became important for us to see Ed as an ordinary bloke. That’s how we are with people we admire. We like Peter Jackson because he’s scruffy. We like Alison Holst because she’s as plain as a pikelet. We like Colin Meads because he stayed on the farm. We struggle with Kiri because she can come across as a bit grand. She is also opinionated, and Ed incurred public disfavour only when he expressed opinions on politics or personal morality.
One result of his willingness to downplay his own abilities was that the public Ed could appear a little dull. In private, by most accounts, he was a lot livelier. Partly, this was a function of his age and time – an era when the sorts of things he did were done out of sight. Imagine an Everest expedition today without a film crew, sponsors and its own MySpace page.
Fortunately, with his self-deprecating remarks, affability and approachability, he made it easy for us to accept him as something he wasn’t: one of us. “We would see him and Lady Hillary at the supermarket. He’s an inspiration to all of us” was one of the dafter non sequiturs prompted by his death and reported in the press.
According to ESPN, he described himself on his passport as an “author-lecturer”. He could only have made himself sound more boring if he had added “web designer” and “Kevin Milne”.
But this “ordinary” man was a knight of the garter. He appeared on the stamps of numerous countries. He turned up as a gag on American sitcoms. He lived in what is proverbially the poshest area in New Zealand. Even his fancy middle name was that of the knight who wins the Holy Grail.
You can downplay your own abilities only so much. The symbolism of Ed’s endeavours could never be concealed: first, furthest, highest, coldest, longest. He took on only the most extreme challenges, and if they weren’t already there, he invented them. In many ways he was as atypical a New Zealander as it is possible to be, and that is what we should be celebrating and taking as our example.
