Gloria Hemingway - Early Life

Early Life

Gregory Hancock Hemingway was born in Kansas City, Missouri on November 12, 1931, to novelist Ernest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. In childhood, he was called Gigi or Gig and was, according to a close observer, "a tremendous athlete" and a "crack shot." As an adult he preferred the name Greg. Hemingway attended the Canterbury School, a Catholic prep school in Connecticut, graduating in 1949. He dropped out of St. John's College, Annapolis, after one year and worked for a time as an aircraft mechanic before moving to California in 1951.

He married against his father's wishes and experimented with drugs, which led to his arrest. The incident prompted his father to lash out viciously at Greg's mother, Pauline, in a bitter phone call. Unknown to anyone, Pauline had a rare tumor of the adrenal gland that can cause a deadly surge of adrenaline in times of stress. Within hours of the phone call with Ernest, she had died of shock on a hospital operating table. Ernest blamed his son for Pauline's death, and Greg, who was deeply disturbed by the accusation, never saw his father alive again.

Greg retreated to Africa, where he drank and shot elephants. He spent the next three years in Africa as an apprentice professional hunter, but failed to obtain a license because of his drinking. He joined and left the U.S. Army in the 1950s, suffered from mental illness, was institutionalized for a time, and received several dozen electric shock treatments. Of another stint shooting elephants he wrote: "I went back to Africa to do more killing. Somehow it was therapeutic." It wasn't until nearly a decade later, in 1960, that he felt strong enough to resume his medical studies and respond to his father's charges. He wrote his father a bitter letter, detailing the medical facts of his mother's death and blaming Ernest for the tragedy. The next year, his father killed himself, and once again Greg wrestled with guilt over the death of a parent.

He obtained a medical degree from the University of Miami Medical School in 1964.