Gloria Hemingway - Middle Years

Middle Years

In the course of his first four marriages, he had eight children: Patrick, Edward, Sean, Brendan, Vanessa, Maria, John, and Lorian. One of those marriages, to Valerie Danby-Smith, Ernest Hemingway's secretary, lasted almost 20 years. Gregory's fourth marriage, to Ida Mae Galliher, ended in divorce in 1995 after three years, though they continued to live together and remarried in 1997.

In 1972, Maia Rodman, Hemingway's childhood tennis coach and a family friend who had fallen in love with him, dedicated her book The Life and Death of a Brave Bull to Gregory.

He practiced medicine in the 1970s and 1980s, first in New York and then as a rural family doctor in Montana, first in Fort Benton and later as the medical officer for Garfield County, based in Jordan, Montana. Interviewed there, he said: "When I smell the sagebrush or see the mountains, or a vast clean stream, I love those things. Some of my happiest memories of childhood were associated with the West." In 1988, authorities in Montana declined to renew Hemingway's medical license because of alcoholism. Hemingway battled bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and drug abuse for many years.

Hemingway and his brothers tried to protect their father's name and their inheritance by taking legal action to stop the popular local celebrations called "Hemingway Days" in Key West, Florida. In 1999, they collaborated in creating a business venture, Hemingway Ltd., to market the family name as "an up-scale lifestyle accessory brand". Their first venture created controversy by putting the Hemingway name on a line of shotguns.

Read more about this topic:  Gloria Hemingway

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