Cherry Wilder and the Most Famous Man in the World

Above: Picture of Cherry Wilder in her college revue

The Frankfurt Book Fair of October 1990 was probably the largest international book fair held in the history of publishing to that date. More than 300,000 people attended, and in particular it was clear that software companies were starting to pay a great deal of attention to international markets. The book fair did a good job of selling to software developers the notion that sending people to showcase their wares at the book fair Is “book fair” supposed to be capitalized or not? would be good for business. And while the software of that generation would not necessarily be as widely adopted as the software people wanted, there was a fair amount of action in that area, something relatively new for the Buchmesse.

During the fair, however, there was something else going on that had nothing . . . well, very little . . . to do with software, or even books, at the time. The two Germanies were to be reunited as one Germany. Needless to say, this was a huge event of great importance to the people of many nations, both those allied with the West as represented by the members of NATO, and the Eastern bloc, to which the German Democratic Republic was allied, the members of the Warsaw Pact. Or as Americans would think of it, “behind the Iron Curtain,” Eastern Europe under the quite strong thumb of the U.S.S.R.

But the book fair didn’t seem particularly strongly affected by the reunification. At least not right away. The night of October 2, at midnight—just as it was becoming October 3, a ceremony was held that officially made Germany one nation again, for the first time since the end of World War 2 in 1945

I remember this well because that night, I was driven in a minivan to a Frankfurt suburb, to a book launch party being held by the publisher of a new book for which Cherry Wilder had contributed the translated text. It was a book of photographs of the Himalayas, with text originally written in English by Sir Edmund Hillary. Today, Hillary is still, known to have been the first person of European descent to climb Mount Everest, even as there are now roughly four thousand people who have climbed to the top of Everest. And that is still a notable feat. But when he first did it in 1953, along with a Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, Hillary was not merely notable. He was, indisputably, the most famous man in the world.

Everest has long been a symbol of the quest for great achievement. Scaling the highest peak . . . what a wonderful metaphor for doing something amazing, right? Hillary, who in his long career as an adventurer, has also been to both North and South Poles, was feted in many places for scaling Everest.

By 1990, he was glad that people no longer besieged him with invitations to receive yet more honors for the achievement. But he was still, thirty-seven years after Everest, at the age of seventy, grateful to Tenzing, and to the Sherpa people, for the help he got on the way to the top of the mountain. The book that he wrote the text for was a project he had initiated for the specific purpose of helping to raise funds for medical facilities for the Sherpa people of Nepal. He had helped raise funds for a hospital for the Sherpa people before, but the need for new equipment, supplies and improved facilities in their isolated land was (and, I’m sure, remains) acute.

When I arrived at Cherry’s house for the book fair that year, she told me that she’d heard a rumor that Sir Edmund Hillary himself was going to be at the party for the launch of his book. But she had not been able to get anyone to confirm the rumor. The publisher was trying to make sure that Hillary would attend, but it was far from a sure thing. This was all happening on Tuesday, the day before the opening of the book fair, and I had planned to go to help set up the St. Martin’s Press booth, so I went off to Frankfurt from the house in Langen (Hessen). But Cherry admonished me that I had to call her at 3 PM, because she would know by that time whether we could expect Hillary to show up at the party that night.

This was before cell phones were in common use, even in Europe, and phone booths at the Messegalende, the convention center, were packed with people trying to call their offices in various countries around Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to call Cherry at three Three or 3? It’s 3 above but three further down below. It should be 3PM but three without the PM , and I didn’t want to make her worry about whether she could tell me what news there might be on the Sir Edmund front.

My good luck was that the nice people of Writers House, the agency that represented my wife’s books—and those of many other talented people, including Neil Gaiman and Stephen Hawking—had a telephone in their booth on the floor of the book fair. And their foreign rights manager, Maja Nikolic, was kind enough to let me make the call. I’m sure she was relieved to know it was a local call!

I dialed Cherry’s number at the stroke of three, and Cherry picked up the phone almost before the first ring had finished. Before I could even say, “Hello,” Cherry answered the call, saying, with enormous excitement, “He’s here, Jim! Sir Edmund is going to be at the party tonight. He’s coming! Sir Edmund is coming! Come home, quick!”

I can honestly say that I never, ever heard such unbridled excitement in her voice before that phone call, or afterwards, either. And I can’t say I can blame her for being excited. After all, Hillary wasn’t only the most famous man in the world for a number of years. He was also a countryman of hers, a New Zealander. How could she not be hugely excited to meet the most famous New Zealander of all time?

Having already done a bit to help get the St. Martin’s booth in order, I was free to leave the fair, and I did so immediately. Cherry was quite clear on the phone that I should not dilly-dally, but must come home directly! (And I knew that when she said, “directly,” she mean, “Immediately,” not, “without detours.”) I don’t really know what this sentence is for. To explain to readers who might not know what this particular meaning of “directly” is? Yes. do you think it's peantic? It's a British thing, not an American

When I got back to the Grimm/Wilder house, Cherry briefed me on the plan. We would be picked up by a bunch of science fiction fans who lived in the Frankfurt area and worked as librarians for the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in and around Frankfurt—who then numbered well over 100,000 people. The fans, who were mostly in their twenties, knew Cherry quite well, because she was the only reasonably prominent writer of SF and fantasy living in that part of Germany at that time. When they arrived, I could tell right away that to Cherry, these fans were kind of like her kids, and to them, she was pretty much their den mother, thoughtful and protective of them, and helpful in many ways, especially in being as friendly and kind to them as she was to me and other travelers from English-speaking parts of the world. Her house was a haven of Anglophonic comfort, full of books, tea and biscuits, and good conversation.

We piled into their van, and then the adventure really began. It was only when we started to navigate the streets of the suburb where the publisher lived that we started to see people who were having a great time celebrating the imminent ceremonial reunification of Germany.

Let me be clear about this: there were people asdrunk as skunks, weaving or staggering through streets with seemingly no awareness at all that there were vehicles—heavy, thousands-of-pounds, fast-moving vehicles— in the streets, and if the people driving the vehicles weren’t extraordinarily careful and mindful of the people weaving and staggering, those poor besotted (yes, literally besotted) folks might end up under the wheels or bashed into by those vehicles.

It was a somewhat harrowing ride, especially, for me, because I was a passenger, and could see how close we came on at least four or five occasions, to running someone over. Why would you be better able to see this as a passenger versus as a driver? The driver’s the one who has to make sure they don’t run anyone over. No, but as a driver, you can do something about it; as a passenger--especially one who is often a driver, the feeling of helplessness is extremely acute, moreso (for me, anyway) than if I'd never driven. Once you drive a fair amount and know that feeling of control, being a passenger can be harder to take. That's just the way it feels to me, but only if it's dangerous conditions for some reason . . . Moreoever, I had the terror of one who is used to driving, who can only watch in horror at each near-miss of someone who heedlessly staggered toward our van. I will admit that it is entirely possible that if we had run over one or more pedestrians, they might not have noticed, so soused and happy were they. Nonetheless, I was profoundly relieved when we arrived at the party without having to scrape anyone off the front bumper of the van.

When we got inside, there were at least twenty or so people already at the party, eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking wine or other beverages. I was not drinking anything alcoholic, mostly because I was already tired from the flight the night before, and hadn’t really had a lot of time to catch up on sleep. And I wanted to be able to be coherent when I met Sir Edmund Hillary. Is it really important to describe why you weren’t drinking wine? Will people otherwise assume you were drunk while talking to Sir Edmund?

I didn’t have long to wait. After no more than a half-hour, I found him. He was talking with a couple people, and I just joined the little group, listening to what they were all saying. It was quite cordial and convivial. Hillary wasn’t especially witty, but I had no reason to expect that. But he was friendly, and more surprising to me, entirely down to earth. He seemed quite interested to meet me, even though I was less than half his age, from another continent, and not even a subject of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. He, of course, was a subject of the Queen’s, and I could tell right away. Isn’t everyone from New Zealand technically a subject of the queen, regardless of their accent? I had only heard the New Zealand accents of Cherry and a very few others before that night, and his accent wasn’t very pronounced. He was quite easy to understand, for which I was grateful.

The second thing I noticed about him was that he was quite hale and hearty. He was full of energy, and I was impressed that at the age of seventy, after flying from New Zealand only the day before, he was entirely friendly and willing to answer any questions I might have about his life, his climb to Everest, and his sheep ranching.

I did not know, before I met him, that he was a sheep rancher, and that surprised me. Growing up, I’d had an image of him as someone who must live in a swanky hotel suite in some major city of the world . . . or maybe in a bunch of suites in a number of different swanky hotels in a lot of major cities. But he never seemed to be that guy, in the hour or so that we talked. He was quite the opposite. Yes, he loved to climb, and to go places where not a lot of people had ever gone . . . and come back. But he also loved his ranch, and sounded like he would be relieved when he could return to the ranch, having raised a bunch more money for Sherpa healthcare facilities, personnel and supplies.

The other thing that struck me was that his teeth were . . . well, they weren’t the teeth of someone who cared about his or her celebrity.They looked as if he didn’t take very good care of them. It may have been because there was no fluoride in the water where he lived. I’m not sure that this is such a great thing to include, since it’s pretty much a stereotype. It might be true to a degree, but pointing it out seems strange.

Regardless, as I said, he was otherwise quite hale, and I wasn’t about dental hygiene. At the same time, I thought it was appropriate that he was so unpretentious that he didn’t do something to make his teeth sparkling white and perfect. I think you can continue to talk about how unpretentious and down to Earth he was without mentioning the teeth. It reinforced my impression of him as being someone who was really the salt of the earth. Here’s this guy, he’s been where nobody had ever been before; he’s incredibly brave and resourceful, and he has been on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, and on the cover of all the major news magazines wherever they might be published. But it hadn’t changed him in a measurable way; hadn’t made him a fancy man, a vain person, despite what must have been adoring, fawning crowds who greeted him wherever he went—even here, this night, in Frankfurt.

As for Cherry, it’s safe to say that she was, as she put it, “over the moon,” and throughout my time with her and her family, she never quite completely stopped being excited about what happened that night, meeting Hillary and talking with him. I know they did talk; he was extremely grateful to her for translating his English into well-phrased German for the book, and she was very pleased to know that.

I had not realized, before Cherry told me about her translation of Hillary’s text into German, that she ever did translation work. I knew her only as the author of the Rulers of Hylor trilogy of high fantasy adventures, the science fictional Torin Trilogy, and her other original sf, fantasy, horror and suspense novels and short stories.

On some level, I knew that she must be extremely good with foreign languages, because I can’t imagine how else she would have gotten on so well living in Germany, with a German husband. I’m no expert in German, and I can’t speak to the quality of her accent, but she was certainly fluent in German whenever I heard her interacting with native Germans. And her husband, Horst, never, in all the years I visited them, corrected her German when they were talking.

I got the strong impression that Horst felt very lucky to have met Cherry, someone who was ultimately willing to move thousands of miles to stay with her husband in his native country, where she, at first, didn’t speak the language at all, but picked it up so very well.

As for correcting her, I wouldn’t say that Horst never corrected her. He did, sometimes, correct her regarding some even or other they shared. It was always comforting to me when I saw them disagreeing on the facts of some shared memory. I have the feeling that any couple that has been married for more than ten years or so will have such little differences of opinion about such things. But that—and the subject of bier—British v. German . . . well, that was something we could all argue about. And cheerfully did, now and again.

I remember when Cherry and I got home that night, before the reunification ceremony had started, we all popped bottles of good German bier—lager for me, darker for them—and sat, glued to the television set in their living room as history was made. Horst, having been born and lived until the end of the war in Germany, must have felt very strange, seeing Germany become a single political entity again. When he left, to seek safety in Australia, he was still a teenager. Now, forty-five years later, he had lived for years far away from Berlin, where he lived with his parents. And after that, he’d lived for more than another decade in a Germany strangely divided. Later that week, he told me about how he came to leave Germany, but that’s a story for another time.

But it’s a heck of a story, and I’ll share it with you next week.