Gloria Hemingway

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Gregory Hancock Hemingway (12 November 1931 – 1 October 2001), known later as Gloria Hemingway, was the third son and youngest child of famed author Ernest Hemingway, the second by his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1931. Hemingway died in 2001 of hypertension and cardiovascular disease in Miami-Dade Women's Detention Center. For years Hemingway had been a transsexual and eventually had sex reassignment surgery.[1][2] Hemingway was due to appear in court on the day he died, facing charges of indecent exposure and resisting arrest without violence.[3]

Hemingway was a doctor, but the authorities in Montana chose not to renew his medical license in 1988 because of his ongoing alcoholism.[3] He had also battled bipolar disorder and drug abuse for many years.[4]

Hemingway was married four times. His last marriage, to Ida, ended in divorce in 1995 after three years. He underwent a sex change procedure that same year and, in a 1997 ceremony in Washington, they remarried. Upon his death the legitimacy of the marriage was called into question. His $7,000,000 (£4.2m) estate was left to widow Ida, but his children challenged the inheritance, claiming that Ida could not be a widow as the marriage was not legal (his home state of Florida does not recognise same-sex marriages). The parties eventually reached an undisclosed settlement.[4]

Before the sex reassignment surgery, Hemingway fathered eight children: Patrick, Edward, Sean, Brendan, Vanessa, Maria, John and Lorian. [1]

Hemingway wrote an account of his father's life and the strained relationship they had.[1] Entitled Papa: A Personal Memoir it was published in 1976 with a preface by Norman Mailer and detailed the cause of the bad feelings and years of estrangement. Daughter Lorian Hemingway went on to write about her father in the 1999 book Walk on Water: A Memoir.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c McDonald, Craig. November 2004. "The Valerie Hemingway Interview Part 1: Running With The Bulls. Accessed 27 May 2007.
  2. ^ Yardley, Jonathan. Washington Post. 11 November 2004. "A Writer's Companion". Accessed 27 May 2007.
  3. ^ a b c "The Strange Saga of Gregory Hemingway". Accessed 27 May 2007.
  4. ^ a b BBC News. 3 October 2003. "Hemingway legacy feud 'resolved'". Accessed 27 May 2007.