Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Dianne Roberts and Jim Whittaker

is he still alive why is he never married and robert too you'll be broke years jude law born in nineteen twenty nine in seattle washington but when i was ten minutes in front of my brother who says now he's waiting in line ever since and we began to climb to the boy scouts them

again the gao them are new arrivals <unk> island rainier is like everywhere except for television so it's a training ground for months and will what this is is that that is listed as if they are lucky enough to be the first american magic trip and i live in this moment it is oh boy

abortions the summit is optional the edge of town is known to have hit towns literally come off the mountain come down after being out for months in the small eyes to see the little blade of grass and you look at the green grass tolkien would stop would look at that draft my god look at that made a flour and then you get down to smell the dirt and years ago i remember oh this is beautiful this magical planet everest was a book that was a real shocker because i know there's this well publicized we came back and there's a ticker tape parade in seattle and suddenly in mosul we're losing young them up and time magazine and it went back and double

melodrama goal now from president kennedy and her sister don't wind up all kinds of doors in nineteen fifty five the only full time employee at rei i was in a room twenty by thirty and that was i was the episode lock the door to cause of those <unk> alden take a peek as how big it was and so some of london tailor made out of your home and it grew in a group i left in nineteen seventy nine i had no i could in a company that had gone from eighty thousand dollars to forty six million that's a call but after taking about for you know it was a good run and i got to climb over a complete ruin and do live event she was sixty five geographical region like the lead to climb up mount

cameroon you got the highest uncle and peek in canada named after the president's own allies so do you have a job to do and so as i wind up the team to a barbie can call themselves i'd like to go on a similar climb a mountain before we signal as the demolition had never been climbed a four isn't as oj there's a great clown his column the end of the summer for his first man has them on the top with jim good for them we see that some delegate your phone with your phone image on john glenn hundreds of them for us to move this world and that i was someone to run sort of withdrawal fb i still haven't over this amazing that joseph says is a terrible thing to have been murdered in the old such potential salaries with him holding attorneys

and bobby's angela merkel's hands wearily lost bloggers terrible owner fortune was appalled her through that winter and were reburied him so that was a terrible but your sister you know where they're really changed the course of history the little a bullet and nixon came in and what the difference it could have made but the news and gerald connolly went through a divorce followed after the after the i made mistakes and we did there are different things that we have to in different ways i was still involved are moms and so forth and that was not inclined to do that it was very difficult because of the divorce

to prove it was the truman bobby i'd call a membership in my foot more connected hours so they divorced a year and a half of them or burma and i have a wonderful relationship and sort of over again became my wife a story from denver i grew up in calgary on the canadian prairie and just you know i was a cub went to college there was working for the national park service just kind of a normal quiet tell gary and sort of life and then into my life potts this

famous american mountain climber kind of shocking actually before i met jim i was in the process of becoming a photographer and some of jim's climbing friends got together and said that they'd like to twenty two which is the second highest mountain in the world and i didn't actually know enough about it to be intimidated at the time so i just that way get a donor then the himalayas and there climber big tall now it's pretty nice looking mountain and now it's a photographer's dream why not i was going as photographer primarily anyway not of the climb are so it just seemed like a great adventure to me but the norm or an expedition of rest an expedition for fifteen years it took us a month to get the base camp but then we had people are sick the liaison officer couldn't control the porters a strike every other day that have proper foot care are calling and they want more money and those of their hair was a mess

no we didn't we got the corner on government run on fire slowly was terrell came back just really really be defeated completely defeated i'd been told that i was the first one on an expedition to take to that as an issue didn't really sink in for me at that time but i guess it it might pick up the fact that there were rumblings going on behind my back that but it's are deliberately try to keep myself out of it as much as possible that idea i guess they reacted badly is what i'm trying to say then of course i was sarah madly in love with him at the time and was pretty focused on that as well which might even hear was obviously did cause problems then i think that there was no resentment on that fear out there was a little there was a lot of resentment on the team had but here i was with my beautiful though woman going into my demos and i'd just illegal and didn't understand the dear little bit of

jealousy and some of the guys from the team and so on it it took them years to come up to me and say you know you know you made a real contribution on that expedition and hasn't been really recognized in some ways all of the delays that we had getting into the mountain and so on for me as a photographer in some ways we're blessing because it gave me an opportunity to photograph a lot of the local people didn't have the time to set my tripod and make beautiful images and so fourteen days

ok we've had before and thereafter were laughing outside in twenty eleven and john you said that this is the only place in the world where to squat and without moving your feet you can take a crap and china an mp in pakistan and we did though another job my god who could do that anyway so was good climate put the forums on the dime co pilot directed for women in north america we're going to twenty six thousand feet without bottle oxygen after key to recovery took it easy and i retired from rei there was a fellow that i can with

the evacuees for the girl group of people that have some physical disabilities that you want to bring out the glamour here to say well sure <unk> vietnam he's black thanks buddy that's

right summit in every single one of the people on that trip it was ever although answering year knowing that we were going to be walking across their bodies the eleven people who had been killed in an ice fall just a week before and of course it was on all of our mind course where were rope next to blind people and they can't see what's above jim was roughed up with the with the group and he he moved through this area and i was in the rope team that was behind that and those of us who can say so when you close but the point is

by i think was just just been tripped and fell and told us later i knew i was dead i just knew that i was dead and i have nothing but wonderful memories about that crime if you could take two weeks worth of time in the mountains and say how could this be the most most fine and most rewarding two weeks that you've ever spent in the mountains in your life that would absolutely be i hadn't actually really spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not i wanted to have a family i mean it was kind of a seventies i was a free spirit we've been doing all this climbing we've been i've been being a photographer and having this amazing life that wasn't really conducive to having young babies in our inner life and an gm actually really encouraged me to do to you know i said well do you jim i don't know you know if you're you know do i go through this again the wannabe know have kids in

college when you're in your seventies and that kind of stuff and he basically said to me i think he will regret it for the rest of your life if we don't do this eventually at thirty five just was born a man and his brother a good number to it when i was thirty seven and we moved to port townsend built a big log house jim jim had gotten interested in log house building at the time and we had made some money selling a house in seattle so we decided to just build this giant white house that everyone ended up calling the taj mcadams nineteen eighty seven before the walk and hours til i'm amazed at the core we got to get over some friends other climbers the moment we discuss what what could we do with our common abilities that might further the interests of the world at large and that was basically a voter summit of some months just analyzed one ever with soul which i mean americans demonstrate in the world what can be done to friendship and cooperation

i went over to china and so they were so as they said we haven't sold it simmer for thirty year i said oh it's a good opportunity to demonstrate her personally so well though he was the soul of so untrue so i'm here until i gave this pitch about side by side road together friends peace for willkie snowboarders wars and this guy came up as i was talking big stronger than thirty years with the years old thirty years old crying tears rolling their teeth and income level comes up to us and cerberus it was you want and he said you want to know that what you do is the most important thing the liver during the life of for world peace the law he said he want you know that he lost three brothers and a father in world war two and that the soviets lost twenty million people in world war two you want to know that the soviet people don't want any more war and abner mikva nineteen ninety

i thought okay that's twenty years after day twenty years ago seven or day celebration to begin to clean off the world from the top down to clean up the garbage left on average so reporters it was amazing i called the help i told the tibetans are saying would be terribly windy windy as that they could remember when i went to martin soft jack stands and i

had told her when she talked to one of our friends hoping that was a hopi indian says photographer for geographic seventy to the hopi maybe i can do something so she has the hope is they can stop the wind and the hope is that with just the window wyden and then we can move to serve in addition lewis a solid color on the day of the climb i said dianne weather's clear to win and she said i'm leaving for the summer right now juma morning he said well right now right singing aimee

aimee at an incredibly successful and we felt that those are just the slope is people who made the guinness book of workers will oppose the more successful core members we put twenty on the song that set the base camp cook up safe when interpreters on a personal so we just we did an incredible climber stood on the summit we talk to borscht in the name of patient and understanding so thank you so you're planning on it

three right about the time that we were building this house we unfortunately got involved in a very bad business deal set partner that we were involved with committed fraud lied about their assets of the company that we that we had formed and what the dominant force them wear suits so we could borrow more from the band and i was on the bottom of the bread jam and i had in retrospect quite stupidly find at a guarantee of her solidarity with the bank which was not limited to the amount of the original loan re warm there's people almost a million dollars i wish i'd known then what i know now we'd pay tv show him a felon but didn't go to jail for me we ended up

having the bank come after us for the entire long and i lost all of my motive to my children for americans everywhere and we got to the point of almost having to file bankruptcy are and we didn't have to file bankruptcy but they're of the short story is that we ended up with a gigantic mortgage on her house which we couldn't figure out how to make the payments on time so that's one reason why when salinger agreed so awesome of my little bubble bobble to call for four years i was imprisoned on a fifty four foot long boat big as a boat goes but still you know think of a four hundred square foot apartment with two teenage boys and a husband we definitely got on each other's nerves a lot but the really interesting thing about being on a boat is that you can't go away and sell it for very long i mean whatever the situation is you gonna work it out and if you're yelling at each other you're yelling at each

other in this really tiny space and before you know it worked in austin things because the pay is a lot of the vibe vivian was it clear the air or i with all worried about educating our sons i bought a whole bunch of books frowns a well known correspondent school and the boys weren't do their papers and we were a male it all back and we were complete failure that we were on a school failure it just did not make sense to any of us to be sitting in mexico down below in a hot

cabin studying medieval english history when you were in mexico for the first time in your life you know so we were just we were biting heads about it all the time it was terrible it was miserable so we kind of just decided that we just we're going to do it so you know they learn that they learn the legalities between navigation about whether they learned about tides and currents and all the real life that we thought about different cultures they learn things bits and pieces of languages are and they learned a lot of history of the places that we went to have had oh meaning it's and surprise surprise we came back and our younger son went into the grade

that he was supposed to be an and he's the very successful college student now our understanding and went straight to college where he's a senior at brown university now we continue to to work too hard to do what we have to do to pay for their college and you know support ourselves you know jim at seventy seven is still lecturing and i'm kind of his roadie and his tech assistant and his booking agent and his one woman speaker's bureau they're definitely challenge of being married to someone gets twenty years older than i am dave socks with strong new lows joy old european of these big duffel bags over the reins again here today money i am i need the other is about american walk well i

tried to commandeer last summer and i had the money to join me so i realized i had to do something and i had to have two knees replaced and those are amazing their life should be an adventure and write a check things out and do is what says you can you know none of us are going to go out of this alive so we do it we can do it before we leave not really the great thing about this is that he has he delights in in my enjoyment of the things that i'm doing so it's not as if he's saying you know oh don't go out and drove because i want to become a stay home and watch tv with me or anything like that it means just not that kind of guy he is out there

enjoying the fact that i'm enjoying doing these things so that's so that's really a blessing soon top of the lord says rowing has changed my life it is every bit as much a fine or more as anything ever been in the mountains are on the ocean on a big sale by you know for the over fifty years of the competitive you know a lot of italian voters elbows really receptive are either leaving those nested those most intimate and ten minutes apart in a really raises pushing it over tunisians will be a wonder the times on the card because i don't want them once what the heck is the title of dr nissen you dummy text of boardwalk empire and there are similar brain damaged or take a prisoner that reason i'll be seventy eight for the bmi at first to send

someone to afford to whatever you can do or dream you can be good at four dollars of genius paul were there's so many thank you fb