KEY POINTS:
You have to feel for the Hillary family. Eleven days must have been a cruelly long wait to formally farewell Sir Ed. But as Prime Minister Helen Clark said at the funeral, he was also "a central part of our New Zealand family" and the downside is that state funerals take an unconscionably long time to organise.
Perhaps future organisers could take a lesson from the Sherpa Buddhist tradition which sees the need to despatch the departed rapidly, so their journey towards rebirth is not delayed. Speedy despatch also enables those left behind to begin moving on as well.
We can only hope that the decision about a fitting public memorial is not as prolonged. If the debate takes as long as has the building of the Blake memorial - there's no sign of action, six years after Sir Peter's murder - children will be asking their parents who Sir Ed was before we get round to it.
In recent days there's been a flood of proposals to rename mountains big and small and even the whole Southern Alps, after him. National Party leader John Key eagerly jumped on the bandwagon, deciding renaming Mt Cook would be "a fitting tribute". He said, "It's the highest peak of New Zealand, it's the pinnacle of New Zealand and it represents everything that Sir Edmund Hillary was about." Pardon?
Mr Key's comments were enough to attract me to Herald reader Jack Spiro of Howick's idea. He proposed a Hillary Test for all politicians, clergymen, journalists and other instant experts. In acknowledgement of Sir Ed's modesty and lack of cant, opinionists would be required, before speaking or writing, to ask themselves: "Does what I am about to say make sense?" Sadly, to work, I think you'd need an independent umpire.
Another reader wants State Highway One to become Hillary Highway, while there was plenty of support for the Greens' vote-seeking proposal for a new public holiday. For once I agreed with employers' spokesman Alasdair Thompson, that a better idea would be if everyone donated a day's pay each year to Sir Edmund's Himalayan Trust.
That, after all, was his dearest wish. In his own blunt way, he said that after he "kicked the bucket" his dearest wish was that his charitable work in the land of the Sherpas continue. The Government honoured this in 2003 by increasing its annual grant from $40,000 to $290,000 to mark the 50th anniversary of Hillary's pioneering ascent of Mt Everest. On radio yesterday, the Prime Minister broadly hinted that an announcement regarding a lasting memorial would be made around the time of the Queen's Windsor Chapel tribute in April.
That's the Government's plan, and given Helen Clark's earlier comments that "everyone knows Ed himself was very dismissive of formal memorials, he didn't want great statues", it seems pretty clear she plans to honour his wish for his work in Nepal building schools and hospitals and nurturing reafforestation programmes to carry on. That's the Government's tribute. But what about the rest of us?
Like no one else, Sir Ed was part of the New Zealand furniture. A very special part. For half a century he was there, part of the fabric, like the Queen and probably no other person. I'm sure, given the opportunity, that individual New Zealanders would be keen to contribute to the trust funds too.
One or two correspondents have suggested a telethon. Younger New Zealanders won't recall this phenomenon, but those of us who remember the 1970s and 1980s recall the millions raised for charity in these 24-hour television charity drives. In their day, they were as New Zealand as Sir Ed.
Would the magic still work? My adviser on zany ideas, ex-adman and Waitakere City Mayor Bob Harvey, fresh from the funeral service, says yes, but "we need to do it within the next three weeks" - strike while the memory is hot.
So that's the message. Crank the old telethon machine up quickly, dust down all those old celebrities and get the tributes all raised, both Government and personal, by the time of the April commemoration.
