Climber eulogized as ”warrior”

OSWEGO, N.Y. – On a crisp, sunny day that most assuredly would have made him itch to climb the nearest mountain, Michael O’Brien was remembered as a man with a passion for climbing who left a legacy of selflessness.

“Some of us will die sooner than others, and some will die nobler deaths than others. Michael’s death was a noble one,” O’Brien’s sister, Kathryn, said in her eulogy Thursday. “He died a warrior.”

O’Brien, a 39-year-old native of Oswego who lived in Seattle, died May 1, only hours after falling into a 40-foot-deep crevasse on the southwest face of Mount Everest. He was climbing with his 32-year-old brother, Christopher, on a 64-day expedition that would have ended this week.

The O’Briens, who lost their mother in 1996 and a sister three years later to complications from Huntington’s disease, had hoped to be the first American brothers to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain. The two believed the feat would bring worldwide attention to hereditary diseases such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s and hoped to eventually raise $100,000 for the Hereditary Disease Foundation.

“He was engaged in a long, drawn-out path, not just against the disease that claimed his sister and his mother, but against all hereditary diseases, diseases that not only leave travesty and despair in their wake, but guilt and fear and a horrible, tragic legacy,” Kathryn said. “Michael went up that mountain as a son, a brother, a lover, a friend and an uncle. Michael came down a hero.”

This is a small city on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario, and Michael’s father, David, is a family doctor to seemingly everyone in town. So it was no surprise that upward of 750 people attended the funeral Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, where Michael took his first communion.