A surprising detail appeared in the recent New York Times obituary of Patrick Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s last surviving son, who died at the age of 97. The article referred to his sibling this way:
Hemingway’s third child, Gloria Hemingway, was a physician who struggled with alcohol abuse. She wrote a memoir, “Papa” (1976), before undergoing transition surgery later in life. She died in 2001.
That portrayal is strikingly different from the obituary the paper published at the time of his death in 2001, under the headline “Gregory H. Hemingway, 69; Wrote a Memoir Called ‘Papa’.”
Back then, the Times emphasized Gregory Hemingway’s medical career and his battles with alcohol and emotional problems. It noted that he had been married four times, that he was arrested in Florida for indecent exposure and resisting arrest, and that he was found dead in a women’s detention center. The obituary added that, according to news reports, he often dressed as a woman, was known among some friends as Gloria, and had undergone a sex-change operation.
The contrast between the two obituaries is telling—and a little confusing. Gregory Hemingway’s complicated life, including its end, is recounted in detail in Paul Hendrickson’s excellent book Hemingway’s Boat (Vintage, 2012). I don’t remember reading that he had had a sex-change operation. Being away from my library, I asked ChatGPT:
Gregory (1931–2001), the youngest son of Ernest Hemingway, spent much of life struggling both with alcoholism and with gender identity. Later in life, Gregory began living at times as a woman under the name Gloria Hemingway, sometimes describing herself as a transsexual. She took gender-affirming hormones and, according to some accounts, pursued or at least considered surgery. Yet her identity remained complex and ambivalent: she alternated between living as a man and as a woman, never fitting neatly into a single narrative.