Monthly Archives: January 2012

Ernest Hemingway is such a complex person; I’m finding everything about him interests me. I got thinking about his children when reading the parts concerning his doubts over Hadley’s pregnancy. Here’s some information about his 3 sons:

John “Bumby” Hemingway (1923- ) was the only child of Ernest’s first marriage to Hadley Richardson. Jack Hemingway, as he now prefers to be known, physically resembles his father. During W.W.II, he was reconnoitering behind enemy lines in France when he was wounded in a German ambush. He waited out the war as a POW, remained in the army for about 10 years, then pursued a business career. Retired in 1967, he returned permanently to Ketchum, Ida., his father’s last home, to teach languages. His two daughters have updated the family name with their own accomplishments, Joan as a writer and Margaux as a model and actress.

To his father’s delight, Patrick Hemingway (1928- ) became a professional white hunter in Africa after attending both Stanford University and Harvard. Since 1964 he has taught courses at Tanzania’s College of Wildlife Management. The mother of Patrick and Gregory was Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway (1894-1951), Ernest’s second wife.

Dr. Gregory Hancock Hemingway (1931- 2001) has come closest to emulating both father and grandfather in vocations. Now a practicing physician in Montana, he is also the author of a 1976 autobiographical account–Papa: A Personal Memoir–the only book thus far produced by a Hemingway son. Gregory became bitterly estranged from his father in 1951 and never saw him again. The youngest son, like Patrick, worked as a professional game hunter in Africa for a time, but tired of trying to become a “Hemingway hero.” When Ernest died, he said, “I confess I felt profound relief when they lowered my father’s body into the ground and I realized that he was really dead, that I couldn’t disappoint him, couldn’t hurt him anymore.”

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.”

Ernest had no children with his fourth wife Mary Welsh. Ernest ended his life in their home with a shotgun blast.