Explorer Mount Everest,(July 20, 1919 - January 11, 2008 )

SIR EDMUND HILLARY,
Edmund Hillary was born in Auckland, New Zealand and grew up in a small town south of Auckland. His father was a newspaper publisher and a beekeeper. His parents were strict with their children and instilled in them a sense of right and wrong. He learned from them to care for other people. He was brought up to "think about the starving millions in Asia", and in later life he found a way to make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate.

When he was young he helped the family with the beekeeping business. He didn't get any money for helping, but he found ways to save a little money. At that time they lived five miles from the school. When his dad gave him money for the bus, he saved the money and ran to school and back.

His mother was a teacher and advanced him through his lessons to the extent that he was able to go on to high school at age eleven. Of course, at that age he was smaller than all the rest of the students who were a couple of years older. He found it hard to make friends. Books, however, proved to be good companions. He rode the train four hours a day to and from school, so he had a lot of time to read and he read voraciously*, mostly adventure books. These stories and a trip south of Auckland where he first experienced the snowy mountains whetted his appetite to learn about mountain climbing.

After a couple of years in high school he began to grow taller, adding six inches in height one year and five inches the next, until he had caught up with and surpassed many of his peers. He describes himself as having "modest abilities"; just an ordinary student, but physically he became very strong and rugged. He created goals for himself, set his sights high, and developed a strong motivation to complete any tasks he started. This probably explains why he succeeded where others had failed when it came to conquering mountains.

In 1944 he joined the New Zealand air force. When he was off on the weekends he climbed nearby mountains. He was discharged after he was burned in a boating accident and used the money he got from the air force to fund his mountaineering expeditions for the next few years.

By the time the Mt. Everest expedition became available to him he had already climbed eleven different mountain peaks which were over 20,000 feet high in New Zealand, the Alps and the Himalayas*. He joined some early expeditions to Mt. Everest in 1951 and 1952, then John Hunt invited him to join the British expedition to scale Mt. Everest which is the tallest mountain on earth, located in the Himalaya range on the border between Nepal and Tibet, China.