Flashback 2008: Who's on first? Hillary hailed as Everest conqueror, but it was Tenzing

     When I wrote my book on failure, I wanted to consider a vast, arduous undertaking where the achievement of the goal and the non-achievement of it are very similar, very close. I knew that mountaineers had gotten within a couple hundred feet of the summit of Mount Everest and then been forced back.

    So I wrote a chapter, "Were the Mountain Smaller," about all the expeditions that DIDN'T make it to the top of Everest before Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary — in that order — first reached the mountain's zenith.

     That still eludes most people commenting on the event ("History," Napoleon supposedly said, "is a lie agreed upon.") And since it is Mount Everest climbing season, again. And we are treated to photos of mobs of climbing reaching the summit. And are reminded, again, that Edmund Hillary reached the summit on May 29, 1953. I thought I would mention, again, that he wasn't the first.

     This is from when the column filled a page, and I've retained the very spot-on complaint of a downstate reader.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Perhaps it is the expected haziness after more than half a century. Perhaps it is the respect afforded to the newly dead. But most obituaries of New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, 88, who joined the choir invisible Friday, ignored one salient and significant point.
     He may not have been the first man on the summit of Mt. Everest.
     Yes, the Associated Press calls him "the first person to stand atop the world's highest mountain" and credits modesty for his initial reluctance to claim he got there ahead of his climbing partner, Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.
     "He was humble to the point that he only acknowledged being the first man atop Everest long after the death of Tenzing."
     That's one way to look at it.
     Another is that Tenzing was really the first man there, a fact initially disregarded by Hillary and his team, since Tenzing was the porter, the valet, one of countless human pack animals who had been humping crates of champagne up the side of Everest for British expeditions for decades. In their view, Tenzing couldn't be the first man atop Everest, whether he beat Hillary there or not, because he wasn't quite a man, and they were shocked when, after the ascent, the joyous Nepalese greeted Tenzing as the conqueror of Everest.
     There isn't room here to lay out the whole controversy, but suffice it to say that I believe Tenzing got there ahead of Hillary, despite Hillary's claims after his partner was safely dead. Tenzing had to be first because otherwise the Brits would never have been coy about this for so long. You could feel their frustration at this unexpected equal appearing before them, as if materializing out of the thin mountain air.

AND I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF!!!

     Who else missed the big asterisk by Edmund Hillary's name? The Washington Post missed it, as did the Los Angles Times, the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune ("the first person to reach the summit.") The Sun-Times obituary was vague, though the headline overstated the case -- "First to scale Everest" -- as headlines will do.
     Besides this column, the only paper to remember the controversy was the New York Times. Which is why, let me remind you, we need more than one newspaper.

DOWNSTATERS GRAB THEIR PITCHFORKS

     I don't print many letters because to do so seems coasting. But I knew, after tossing a sharp word like "hick" at my readers in the hinterlands, that I was then morally obligated to let them have a whack at me in print.
     This response from Ralph Moses, though a tad long, seemed the most printable, both because it wasn't mean-spirited and because he hails from the grandly named, if distant, town of Golden Eagle, Ill.

     Mr. Moses writes:

     After reading your January 9th column, The Buck Stops Here, three times to make sure I understood what you were saying, I started to write a letter to the editor about how self-centered, ill-informed, arrogant and boorish your statements were.
     But then I decided I had much more to say than could be fit into a Letter To The Editor and decided to go directly to the source.
     So, let me offer you a different perspective on a few things.
     First. Chicago is not the economic engine that drives Illinois, much less the entire Midwest. Rather, it rides on the back of those people. Let me remind you that the Chicago Board of Trade made its fame and fortune trading corn, soybeans, wheat and other grains. Likewise, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange started by trading butter and eggs, then later moved into cattle, hogs, pork bellies and other livestock. Those traders didn't even handle the products; just took a cut of the profits!
     Those same exchanges handle lots(!) of money(!) which, in turn, drives the banking system with names like Bank One and LaSalle National Bank. The brokerage firms employ thousands of runners, phone clerks, accountants and lawyers. In the past, the Stockyards used to employ thousands of immigrant workers handling the cattle, hogs and grain that came through Chicago.
     None of those people would have a job had it not been for the people in the hinterlands.
      Second. It is called the Chicago Transit Authority, not the Illinois Transit Authority! The last time I checked, the CTA didn't even cross the boundaries of Cook County! The CTA doesn't come within 300 miles of where I currently live. Why, it didn't even come within 10 miles of where I lived when I lived in Oak Lawn.
     So I ask you this. Why is your problem my responsibility? Why should the City of Chicago, with a population approaching 3 million, be looking to residents of Golden Eagle, population about 200, for a handout?
      Finally, if Chicago is indeed the economic engine of the Midwest, then it is us hicks that should be looking to Chicago for a handout!
     Now, regarding our representatives at the State Capital: Their pork barrel projects, political bickering, and other bull are things that you and I can agree on.
     So I invite you to come visit me and we can discuss the state of the State while I slop the hogs and feed the chickens. We can sit on the front porch swing, sip some cider and commiserate about the graft among aldermen at City Hall (yours and mine).

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     A joke at the expense of city slickers seems in order. Calvin Trillin wrote the following of New York and, despite his claim of uniqueness, it is also true of Chicago:
     Ask yourself why the New York subway system, alone of all the mass transit systems of the world, has maps inside rather than outside the trains. It's to force you to get on the wrong train in order to find out where you're going. You decipher the map to discover that the first step in reaching your destination is to get off the wrong train at the next stop.
         — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 13, 2008