after

Before Hinks’ telegraph (with news of Mallory’s death) reached Ruth. A journalist from the Times got to Ruth’s house. The editor wanted to spare Ruth the shock and indignity of learning of her husband’s death in the morning paper. After learning the news, she went out for a walk with old friends, and then returned home to gather her three children into her bed. She told them what had happened. Curled under the covers, they “all cried together.”

Ruth was brave and wrote to young that she knew he was ready for another life. Then she wrote more desperate not saying what she loved was his life. And that she admired him no less whether he made it to summit or not… Still grappling w the loss and sorting through her grief.

She would later remarry and not have her children live in the shadow of the death of their father but teach them and raise them in the spirit in which he lived.

Conrad Anker found body in 1999. Controversy over how the Americans treated Mallory’s body.  Photos sold – some offers were for $40,000.

“it was quite easy to realize that the price of life is death, and that, so long as the payment be made promptly, it matters little to the individual when the payment is made. Somewhere up there, in that vast wilderness of ice and rock, were two still forms. Yesterday, with all the vigor and will of perfect manhood, they were playing a great game – their life’s desire. Today it is over and they had gone, without their ever knowing the beginnings of decay.  Could any man desire a better end?”

INTO THE SILENCE

WADE DAVIS

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