KEY WEST, Florida — Ernest Hemingway spent the 1930s in Key West, Florida, and more than sixty years after his death, fans, scholars and family members still gather in the island city to celebrate the author’s award-winning novels and adventurous life.
Hemingway Days began in 1981 with a short story contest and a lookalike contest. This year’s celebration ends Sunday, the 125th anniversary of Hemingway’s birth on July 21, 1899.
As a novelist, short story writer and journalist, Hemingway is undeniably in the pantheon of American literature. His legacy permeates the culture and character of Key West.
Hemingway’s great-grandson, Stephen Hemingway Adams, was born nearly three decades after Hemingway’s death. Adams said that working with his grandfather, Patrick Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s second son, helped him gain a deeper understanding of his famous ancestor.
“I got to collaborate with my grandfather and we published a book called ‘Dear Dad,’ “Those were all the letters between Ernest and my grandfather,” Adams said.
The distinction between public perception and documented reality of Hemingway can be blurry. He enjoyed big-game fishing in the Caribbean and hunting in Africa. He enjoyed bullfighting, baseball, boxing and bar hopping. But he was also a serious artist who won Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes. He poured so much of his life experiences into his writing that it can be hard to separate the man from the myth.
Adams said he’s fine with some people valuing the adventurer more than the writer.
“I think it’s a split, and I think that’s the fun of it,” Adams said of the crowd of look-alikes who visit Key West each year.
The Key West Hemingway first visited in 1928 was a rustic fishing village, not a bustling tourist destination. Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, had planned only a brief stop to pick up a car during their move from Paris to Arkansas, where Pauline’s family lived. But the car wasn’t ready, and they had to wait several weeks.
Hemingway quickly befriended local businessmen and fishermen. The couple visited the island regularly and eventually purchased a French colonial house on a 1.5-acre (0.61-hectare) plot in 1931.
After spending most of his 20s in Paris, Hemingway embraced the island’s very different lifestyle, said Cori Convertito, curator at the Key West Museum of Art & History at the customs office.
“He doesn’t come here to be a hermit and just write,” Convertito said. “He’s in the bars all the time. He’s fishing with people. He’s doing boxing matches.”
Convertito pointed out that Hemingway was in his 30s for most of the time he lived in Key West, not the white-bearded “Papa Hemingway” most lookalike candidates imitate. “A Farewell to Arms” was finished shortly after he began visiting Key West, and the reception of that book, along with his reporting on the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, increased his fame.
Hemingway devoted much of his time in Key West to big game fishing with friends. Convertito said Hemingway began pioneering new techniques after he got his own boat, the Pilar, in 1934.
“He was desperate to catch a fully intact marlin,” Convertito said.
The slow process of reeling in a trophy fish left them vulnerable to sharks, similar to the giant marlin caught in Hemingway’s 1952 novel, “The Old Man and the Sea.”
Hemingway focused on catching fish and getting them out of the water quickly. He was an early member of the International Game Fish Association and was named vice president in 1940.
He also became an advocate for the Florida Keys and the people who lived there. “To Have and Have Not,” published in 1937, is set in a Key West ravaged by the Great Depression.
Hemingway was an outspoken critic of the federal government’s response to the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. The official death toll was 423, but more than 250 of the fatalities were World War I veterans hired through a federal jobs program to build the Overseas Highway, which connects the Florida Keys to mainland Florida.
Hemingway rode in an ambulance during World War I and felt a special kinship with the veterans. Corey Malcolm, a historian with the Florida Keys History Center, said Hemingway joined rescue efforts and used his own boat to pull bodies from the ocean.
Michael Morawski, CEO of the Hemingway House & Museumcredits his great-uncle, Bernice Dixon, as one of the first to help preserve Hemingway’s legacy in Key West. The owner of the local jewelry store bought the house for $80,000 in 1961, shortly after Hemingway’s death. The house became a museum in 1964 and was eventually designated a National Historic Landmark.
“The only reason she did it was to create a living memorial to Ernest Hemingway,” Morawski said.
In addition to the historical and literary significance of the house, the museum is also famous for housing the Hemingway cats. Approximately 60 polydactyl cats with a genetic mutation for extra toes still live on the estate. Some of these cats are descendants of the original white, six-toed cat that Hemingway received as a gift from a ship’s captain.
The Hemingway Days festival began as a promotional stunt for Sloppy Joe’s Bar, one of Hemingway’s favorite hangouts. Michael Whalton was working as a manager at the bar in 1980 when he read about a Bad Hemingway Contest, where writers parodied Hemingway’s spare, blunt style.
Whalton decided that a look-alike contest and other activities surrounding Hemingway’s birthday in July could be a great way to attract tourists during the island’s off-season, when hot, humid weather keeps many tourists away.
“I really didn’t know what to expect,” Whalton said. “I got nervous because no one was entered into the look-alike contest, so I called everyone I knew in Key West who had a beard.”
The turnout was better than expected. The author’s younger brother, Leicester Hemingway, contacted Whalton and agreed to judge the look-alike contest along with his wife and daughters. Whalton convinced another of Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughters, Lorian Hemingway, to judge a short story contest.
David Douglas, Chairman of the Hemingway Look-Alike Associationbegan competing in the competition in 2000 and won in 2009. The 70-year-old Houston resident still returns every year as a judge.
“I love the competition, I love the camaraderie between all the competitors,” Douglas said.
David “Bat” Masterson, of Daytona Beach, became the newest “Papa” on Saturday. The retired pilot beat out 121 others in this year’s look-alike contest.
The look-alike group has grown over the years into a service organization with hundreds of members worldwide that has funded more than $350,000 in scholarships for Florida Keys students. The organization also sponsors a youth baseball team in Cubawhere Hemingway moved after leaving Florida.
