Hall Henry Snow

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Biografie:
Henry Snow Hall, Jr. 1895-1987
Bradford Washburn, an Hon. Member of the AC and a lifelong friend of the Hall family, was asked by Lydia Hall to speak at Henry Hall's funeral service on behalf of all his friends. This is what Dr Washburn said:
Barely two weeks ago, I had a heartwarming experience. Late in the afternoon I was starting homeward from my office at the Museum of Science, and I decided at the last moment to make a tiny detour through the beautiful Atrium of the new Omnimax Theatre building - just to take a peek at the many new exhibits being installed there.
Right in the midst of a milling sea of visitors were Henry and Lydia Hall and their guide and neighbour, Sam Leland! Henry and Lydia were just standing there with Sam, marvelling at the beauty of the new hall and the happiness, indeed joy, on all the faces around them.
Something was clearly going on, deep inside them. Something that they shared with only a tiny handful of New Englanders: the thrill of knowing that nothing that was going on around them could possibly be taking place, had it not been for their own courage and faith and generosity.
We drove home together on our last trip to 154 Coolidge Hill. It was a beautiful early-spring afternoon and I will always cherish the memory of those last happy minutes of a 61-year friendship.
Henry Hall meant different things to many different people. To some he was one of a small group of men who convinced General Marshall that the United States should train Mountain Troops. They did - and the 87th Mountain Infantry was deeply involved in the attacks that broke the back of the Axis in the Aleutians and in Italy.
To others he was always present at the meetings of the Harvard Traveller's Club - a member of the Explorers' Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, a 30-year Trustee of Boston's Museum of Science - a constant and generous enthusiast of our great Symphony Orchestra.
But, to the largest group of all, Henry was a mountaineer. I choose this word carefully because he was not at all just a mountain climber-someone who hurries directly to the top, cuts a notch in his ice-axe and then rushes elsewhere to add a new summit to his growing list.
Henry simply loved to be in the presence of great mountains, preferably unexplored ones. He didn't have to get to the top to be happy! He loved the forests and the wilderness - and he loved to be there in the company of others who shared this love. And, most of all, he loved young mountain people.
Like many of us here this morning, his climbing started with hikes and snowshoe-trips in our own White Mountains; often with Bob and Miriam Underhill and Carl and Dorothy Fuller. He'd climbed the Matterhorn before he was 16 and joined the American Alpine Club and the AMC in his early twenties. Over a span of nearly 70 years he attended virtually every AAC meeting, no matter where it was held - and served on its Board of Directors as Member, Secretary, President and finally as its first Honorary President.
Without Henry Hall's faith and generosity, his close and ever-admired friend, Adams Carter, could never have led the American·Alpine Journal to the point where today it is universally considered to be the most distinguished mountaineering publication in the world.
Over the years, Henry didn't confine his activities to the mountains of New England and the Alps. He climbed Africa's Kilimanjaro, Elbruz in the Caucasus, and ventured to South America to make the first ascent of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - the highest coastal peak in the world - with his lifelong friends, Tom Cabot and Waiter Wood. In the early thirties, he and Lydia and their friends, the Croziers, flew across central Alaska to get a closer look at Mt McKinley - and he was a member of the team that was first atop Mt Logan (Canada's highest peak) and, similarly, later, went to Mt Hayes in the Alaska Range. But Henry's very special love was the exploration of the great peaks of the Canadian Rockies and British Columbia - to which he returned year after year, always accompanied by old and trusted friends and guides.
One might easily think from all this that Henry Hall was miserable when he was not on, or at least near to, mountains. That was indeed true for a while, but as early as 1924, when he was one of the founders of the Harvard Mountaineering Club, his greatest joy developed out of chatting, planning and dreaming with young climbers and explorers. He loved to share information. His Cambridge home was a veritable mecca for everyone who loved the wilderness - and particularly the high wilderness.
It was barely possible to squeeze with him into his tiny study - jammed, piled and cluttered with an unrivalled wealth of books, journals and maps from every nook and cranny of the world! This was the spot where hundreds, possibly thousands, of us youngsters always found a listening ear, an infinitude of facts, thoughtful advice and boundless enthusiasm - for what we wanted to try to do.
Henry Hall was never a leader, but he was a source of information and a catalyst of the first order- and, because of this, he was held in the highest esteem by the mountaineering fraternity throughout the world.
When Barbara and I visited the Royal Geographical Society in London last fall for meetings related to our map of Mount Everest, we spent a stimulating evening with Noel Odell- the last man to see Mallory and Irvine alive when they disappeared into the mists of Everest's final pyramid on that fateful June afternoon in 1924. Odell, well over 90 years of age, discussed with us the tiniest details of the upper reaches of Everest as if he'd been there the day before- but the very first question he asked us was: 'How are Henry and Lydia Hall?'
Why did Henry Hall love the wilderness and the heights so much, and why did this enthusiasm leave us so many vivid memories and shape the lives of so very many of his friends? I think that it was because those of us who love the same things realize that, in these high and distant places, we are all deeply moved by the magnificence and wonder and glory of nature when we see them in never-to-be-forgotten terms.
Hudson Stuck, the Archdeacon of the Yukon, once declared that standing on the summit of Mount McKinley meant more to him than owning the richest goldmine in Alaska. And his young partner, Robert Tatum, exclaimed that the view from McKinleys summit was to him like 'looking out the windows of Heaven!'
May I close these reflections about our dear friend, Henry Hall, by reading a sonnet by John Magee, a young RCAF fighter pilot who lost his life in the Second World War. Although it's not about climbing, it marvelously conveys the sense of wonder and beauty that tempts us to the heights.
HIGH FLIGHT
by John Magee
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
God bless you, Henry - for your sharing - your caring - your generosity; but, above all, for opening doors and broadening horizons for a host of youngsters - for over half a century.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 93, 1988-89, Seite 312-315


Geboren am:
1895
Gestorben am:
1987