Sherpas Honor Sir Edmund Hillary

I was just reading the story about Nepal's Sherpa community holding a prayer service in Katmandu on Monday for Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mount Everest and helped thousands of Sherpas living in its foothills by building schools and hospitals.


Monks chanted religious verses as mourners draped a khada, a sacred scarf used only in special Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies, over a photograph of Hillary and placed flowers around it. They lit incense and butter-fed lamps in the ceremony at the Boudha, an important Buddhist temple in Nepal's capital, Katmandu.

Sir Edmund Hillary, The legendary New Zealander, who was the first person to climb to the top of Mt Everest, had died in an Auckland hospital on Friday at age 88, of a heart attack!

The New Zealand government will likely hold a state funeral on Jan. 22 for mountaineering legend Sir Edmund Hillary, Prime Minister Helen Clark said last Saturday. Clark made the announcement after a two-hour meeting with the adventurer's widow, Lady June Hillary. The two women embraced as they greeted one another outside Lady Hillary's house in the Auckland, New Zealand, suburb of Remuera.

Clark later emerged to say there were plans to hold the funeral at Auckland's St. Mary's Church, but first Hillary's body would lie in state at nearby Holy Trinity Cathedral. Edmund Hillary's son Peter, who is understood to be in Europe, was not due in New Zealand until next week, which was one of the reasons for the timing of the funeral, Clark said.


He became the first person, along with Nepalese mountain guide Tenzing Norgay, to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, accomplishing the feat on May 29, 1953. After the climb, Hillary devoted much of his life to supporting the Sherpas, the mountain people of the Himalayas. He raised money for higher education for them and helped set up reforestation programs.

He was an amazing man, and the earth is a darker place for his having left it! Condolences and prayers to his widow, his family and friends!!


sherpas