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SEATTLE — <\/span>Jim Whittaker, who in 1963 became the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest, has died. He was 97.<\/p>\n Whittaker’s 1963 ascent to the summit of Mount Everest came 10 years after Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled the peak. <\/p>\n Whittaker died Tuesday at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. according to a statement from his family.<\/p>\n His Mount Everest feat made the once-shy, rangy climber an instant celebrity, in demand for public appearances and expected to lend his support to good causes.<\/p>\n And it gained him entree into the world of celebrities, including the inner circles of the Kennedy clan. He became a close friend of Robert Kennedy, with whom he climbed a 14,000-foot (4,267 meters) Canadian peak named Mount Kennedy after the 1968 presidential contender’s assassination.<\/p>\n Whittaker, who had been state chairman for Kennedy’s campaign, was devastated by his death.<\/p>\n Bobby Kennedy was “one of the grittiest little guys you’ve ever seen,” the 6-foot-5 Whittaker once remarked. “It’s not how big you are but how tight you are wound that counts.”<\/p>\n Whittaker’s career on the mountain slopes began when he took on the Washington\u2019s Olympic Mountains as a Boy Scout, and he once reflected that the beauty and danger of his sport sharpened the senses.<\/p>\n “You’re in nature, participating in God’s creation … it’s such a high, such a spiritual thing,” Whittaker said in a 1981 interview.<\/p>\n “I think it’s good to participate in that and to face life,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen you live on the edge, you can see a little farther.”<\/p>\n The risks are part of the game.<\/p>\n “The mountains are fair, but they really don’t care,” Whitaker noted in 1987.<\/p>\n His achievements on the remote, snowy slopes of Mount Everest and nearby K2, the world’s second-tallest peak, assured him a niche in the record books. He shared world-class climber status with his identical twin, Lou, who led the first American expedition to scale Mount Everest’s north face.<\/p>\n