Sir Edmund Hillary 1919-2008

I came to know more about New Zealander Hillary in 1996 when I worked on a NOVA special. The project captured the work of famed IMAX movie producer David Brashear on Mt. Everest, multi-casting it live on the experimental Mbone (multi-cast internet backbone). At my end, at WGBH studios in Boston, I took a live feed of Brashear talking (administering a hypoxia/mental acuity test) from Everest base camp with climbers on the summit. In preparation for this I learned just how deadly the adventure could be, as climbers in the previous days/weeks had died on the mountain. Hillary, while noted as the first to summit in 1953, rightfully shared the accomplishment with his Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, who died in 1986. Furthermore, he dedicated much of his later life to trying to improve the lives of that region to which his fame probably brought more bad than good.

James C. Collier

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