Sunday, July 1, 2007

Hemingway's son

I have always been a big fan of ernest hemingway.His courage always kept me going through the hard times and he was one of my favorite writers. I have a book called Papa (by his son) that I always loved. I liked it because you get a rare glimpse into the mind of E. H. I decided to google his son "gregory hemingway" today to see what became of him and I found this awful story.

Gregory Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's youngest son, dies in jail cell at 69

ASSOCIATED PRESS October 4, 2001

MIAMI - Novelist Ernest Hemingway's troubled youngest son died of natural causes in a jail cell. He was 69.

Gregory Hemingway, a former doctor also known as Gloria Hemingway, was found dead at 5:45 a.m. Monday, said Janelle Hall, a spokeswoman for the county corrections department. He had been arrested last week, at least his third arrest in the county.

He often dressed as a woman, and Hall said jail officials had classified him as a woman and believe he had undergone a sex change operation. He died in the women's section of the jail.

Police said family members, whose names they did not make public, confirmed the deceased was Ernest Hemingway's son.

The elder Hemingway killed himself in 1961. A book Gregory Hemingway wrote about his father, "Papa: A Personal Memoir," was published in 1976. It had a preface by Norman Mailer.

In 1997, Hemingway joined with his brothers, Jack and Patrick, in battling the organizers of the sometimes rowdy Hemingway Days celebration in Key West. They said they wanted a more dignified gathering and royalty payments. The celebration was canceled but then revived. Jack Hemingway, who also wrote a memoir of his father, died last year.

Gregory Hemingway's daughter is Lorian Hemingway, author of such books as "Walk on Water: A Memoir."

But alcohol and other problems stalked his life.

"My mother suffered severe brain damage as a result of a car accident directly related to her addiction," Lorian Hemingway has written. "My father lost his medical license for the same reason." Gregory Hemingway had been arrested last week on Key Biscayne, charged with indecent exposure and resisting arrest without violence after a park ranger reported a pedestrian with no clothes on.

He appeared to be drunk or otherwise impaired, said the arresting officer, Nelia Real. "He had no shoes and he had a dress and high heels in his hands," Real said.

"I feel really bad that that happened. He was a very nice guy."

Homicide detectives ruled the death was due to natural causes. The autopsy report listed hypertension and cardiovascular disease, officials said according to Miami-Dade police spokesman Juan DelCastillo. Miami-Dade court records show that he had been arrested in 1996 on an aggravated assault charge and in 1995 on a charge of battery on an officer. The outcome of those cases was not immediately available.

Hemingway, son of the author and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Nov. 12, 1931.

In 1999, Hemingway spoke at the dedication of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer museum in Piggott, Ark., in what had been the Pfeiffer family home. He remarked that his father "is quite fortunate in having just about every place he ever lived in immortalized."






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

was it simply coincidence that you posted this on the eve of Papa's suicide? I highly recommend "A Farewell to Arms."