Elizabeth Boisson doesn't know if her son could hear her. She sure hopes so.
Morgan Boisson was dying of altitude sickness at base camp of Mount Everest on Oct. 20. Someone put a cell phone to his ear.
"I didn't know how bad it was, but they were doing CPR," she said. "I was telling him to hold on and how much we loved him.
"It was soon after that they had to stop CPR, because they were doing it for 30 minutes."
The UA senior was soon pronounced dead at age 20. A world traveler and Arizona Wildcats cheerleader, Boisson will be honored tonight at 8:30 at a candlelight vigil north of McKale Center.
Exploring was in Boisson's blood; he was born in France and made his first international trip, to Chad, at 3 weeks old. His parents took him around the world on vacation - his father, Cyril, is an art dealer - before settling in Cave Creek. He played football at Cactus Shadows High School.
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Boisson spent part of his sophomore year of college studying at a UA international campus in China, and this past summer in France.
The plan was for him to return to the United States in December and finish his final four hours of class while cheering during the spring.
"He actually called me the Thursday before he died, just out of the blue," said UA senior cheerleader Toby Johnson. "We talked about him coming back, about how this year's team is so different and how I was looking forward to him being there."
The East Asian studies major left for Nanjing Normal University in China in September. On Oct. 18, he and 13 UA international studies classmates took a class trip to the base of Mount Everest.
After flying to Lhasa, Tibet, the group took a bus to base camp. The group climbed from 11,000 to 17,000 feet, which was too fast, Elizabeth Boisson said.
On Oct. 19, Elizabeth Boisson said, students saw her son wandering around camp and calling people by the wrong name. He was disoriented and foamed at the mouth before dying the next morning. The group moved to a lower altitude, but Boisson did not improve. The nearest town was four hours away, and it didn't have a hospital, Elizabeth Boisson said.
She said her son was thrilled about going to Tibet, and had written as much on Facebook, a social networking site, leading up to the trip.
Many of his cheerleading teammates had kept up with Boisson through the Internet, said Phoebe Chalk, the UA assistant athletic director who advises cheerleaders and mascots.
Travel was part of Boisson's personality, Johnson said.
"Half of us talk about, 'I went to Lake Havasu for spring break.' He talked about Jamaica and Africa and growing up in France.
"That's something he loved to do - adventures. I told him how I get adrenaline rush from skydiving and bull riding; he gets it from culture shock."
