Climber's legs return to Talkeetna

For the Frontiersman

TALKEETNA -- There's a wall in the bar of the Fairview Inn in Talkeetna dedicated to friends of the Fairview who have died over the years. Photos and paintings of mushers and miners, climbers and pilots remind regulars of the good old days and give visitors a sense of the history of the building that has stood for more than 80 years.

"Most of them died doing what they wanted to do," said Colette Folk, a bartender at the Fairview. "They're not dropping dead behind some desk."

One photo in particular grabs your attention: a man at the Fairview in his late 30s, early 40s. His hair is short enough to be clean cut, his beard, thick enough to give him that rugged-individualist look of Alaskans. He's pouring a beer into some sort of drinking vessel. He's not just smiling, he's laughing, and one look tells you that here was a man who knew how to live.

The man was Ed Hommer, a pilot and mountain climber from Duluth, Minn., who loved Talkeetna and loved the Fairview -- the vessel, one of Hommer's prosthetic legs.

Hommer, like everyone else on the wall, is gone. But he left more at the Fairview than a photo: He left his legs.

"He kind of wanted his legs to dance forever here," said Phillip Weidner Jr., whose father owns the inn.

Hommer lost both of his legs to frostbite after an airplane crash on Mount McKinley in 1981 when he was piloting for Talkeetna's Hudson Air Service. With two prosthetic legs, he returned to flying and returned to the mountain. He became the first double amputee to receive a medical certification to fly commercial airliners.

And, in 1999, he became the first double amputee to summit McKinley.

Daniel Paisner, co-author of a book about Hommer, "The Hill: A True Story of Tragedy, Recovery and Redemption on North America's Highest Peak," wrote, "As a young man, the mountains cost Ed Hommer his legs, his marriage, his prospects, but in the end Ed got the better of the bargain.

He returned to those mountains again and again, and on each expedition managed to reclaim pieces of what he'd lost on McKinley all those years ago. Hope. Purpose. Dignity. Resolve."

Hommer's resolve led him to Mount Everest in 2001, where he attempted to become the first double amputee to scale the world's highest peak.

"This isn't about me. This is about the capabilities of the human spirit and what any of us can accomplish," Hommer said in a 2001 interview with the Duluth News Tribune.

Bad weather forced Hommer to turn back at 26,000 feet. But he didn't give up. He was in training for his second attempt at Everest, on Mount Rainier in Washington, when he was killed by a falling rock on Sept. 23, 2002.

Hommer's prosthetist, friend and climbing partner, Tom Halvorson, was part of the Everest expedition. He said the group talked about what they would want with their remains should they not survive the climb. Hommer, he said, wanted his legs to be returned to Talkeetna.

Halvorson honored his friend's wish at a June 14 gathering at the Fairview. He choked on his words as he spoke to the somber group assembled at the Talkeetna establishment and pulled Hommer's legs from a backpack.

"He would say, 'Don't lie down, don't give up, life still holds great promise -- even against all odds,'" Halvorson said of his friend. "We were brothers by fate and I will love him always."

He held up the photo of Hommer drinking from his leg at the Fairview and requested that both the photo and the legs be displayed at the inn.

"We are deeply honored," Phillip Weidner Sr., Fairview owner, said.

Halvorson later passed the legs around the room so everyone could have a drink from Hommer's legs, which are now displayed on the wall adjacent to the bar.

"People leave Talkeetna, but they always come home to the Fairview. Ed's legs have come home," said the elder Weidner.

Amy Menerey contributed to this article.