Most people picture retirement as a time to slow down. Barbara Hillary had a different idea entirely.
Hillary was a retired nurse from Queens, New York. She had survived lung cancer. The surgery left her with just 75 percent of her breathing capacity. For most people, that would be reason enough to stay close to home.
Instead, at 75 years old, she set her sights on the North Pole.
The expedition involved helicopter transfers, but Hillary was determined to ski the final stretch herself. There was just one problem: she had never cross-country skied before. So she learned. She trained. She built up her endurance from scratch.
Money was another obstacle. She had limited funds and scraped together what she could, seeking donations from private supporters to make the journey possible.
In April 2007, she flew to Longyearbyen, Norway, then traveled by helicopter to a base camp on the Arctic ice. When the weather allowed, she was flown closer to the Pole to begin skiing.
On April 23, 2007, alongside an experienced guide, Barbara Hillary completed that final stretch and became the first Black woman ever to reach the North Pole.
She later described the road to get there in vivid terms, as cited by The Scholar and Feminist Online:
“It’s a series of hell and heaven, as I like to say. The hell you catch is hour after hour of trying to raise funds, talking on the phone, not having a source of reference, tracking down information. The process is somewhat alienating. You’re certainly alienated in this area from most black people, and I was an unknown to the white world. So it was a very difficult, lonely road.”
But she was not finished.
In 2011, at age 79, Hillary completed a journey to the South Pole. That made her the first African American woman on record to have reached both the North and South Poles.
She went on to work as a public speaker, sharing her story until her passing in November 2019 at the age of 88 in Queens, New York.
Barbara Hillary did not let retirement, a cancer diagnosis, reduced lung capacity, or an empty bank account stop her from doing something no one had ever done before. That is a story worth carrying with you.