KEY WEST, Fla. — Ernest Hemingway spent the 1930s in Key West, Florida, and more than sixty years after his death, fans, scholars and family members continue to converge on 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 on the 125th anniversary of Hemingway’s birth on July 21, 1899.
As a novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Hemingway’s place in the pantheon of American literature is undeniable, and his legacy permeates the culture and character of Key West.
Hemmingway’s great-grandson, Stephen Hemingway Adams, was born almost thirty years after Hemingway’s death. Adams said working with his grandfather, Patrick Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s second son, helped him gain a deeper understanding of his famous ancestor.
“I got to work with my grandfather and we put out a book called ‘Dear Papa,’ which had all the letters between Ernest and my grandfather,” Adams said.
The difference between public perception and Hemingway’s documented reality 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 has poured so much of his life experiences into his writing that it can be difficult to separate the man from the myth.
Adams said he’s okay with some people liking the adventurer more than the writer.
“I think it’s a break, and I think that’s the fun part,” Adams said of the large numbers of look-alikes who visit Key West every year.
The Key West that 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 yet and they had to wait several weeks.
Hemingway quickly made friends with local business owners and fishermen. The couple made frequent visits to the island and eventually purchased a French Colonial home on a 0.61-acre plot in 1931.
After spending most of his 20s in Paris, Hemingway embraced the island’s starkly different lifestyle, according to Cori Convertito, curator at the Key West Museum of Art. & History at the Customs House.
“He doesn’t come here to act like a hermit and just write,” Convertito said. “He’s in the bars all the time. He’s fishing with people. He interacts in 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” that most of the look-alike participants emulate. “A Farewell to Arms” ended shortly after he began visiting Key West, and that book’s reception, along with his coverage of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, increased his fame.
Much of Hemingway’s time in Key West was spent fishing for big game with friends. Convertito said Hemingway began pioneering new techniques after getting his own boat, the Pilar, in 1934.
“He was desperate to find 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 one of the early members 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. Published in 1937, “To Have and Have Not” 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 to build the Overseas Highway, connecting the Florida Keys to mainland Florida.
Hemingway drove an ambulance during World War I and felt a special kinship with the veterans. Corey Malcom, a historian at the Florida Keys History Center, said Hemingway joined the recovery efforts and used his own boat to pull bodies from the ocean.
Michael Morawski, CEO of the Hemingway Home & Museum, credits his great-aunt, Bernice Dixon, as one of the first people to help preserve Hemingway’s legacy in Key West. The local jewelry store owner bought the house in 1961, shortly after Hemingway’s death, for $80,000. 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 house’s historical and literary significance, the museum is also known for housing the Hemingway cats. About 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 given to Hemingway by a ship’s captain.
The Hemingway Days festival started 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 around Hemingway’s birthday in July could be a great way to attract customers during the island’s slow season, when hot and humid weather drives away many tourists.
“I really didn’t know what to expect,” Whalton said. “I got nervous because no one had signed up for 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 granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, Lorian Hemingway, to serve as a judge for a short story competition.
David Douglas, president of the Hemingway Look-Alike Society, began competing in the contest in 2000 and won in 2009. The 70-year-old Houston native still returns every year as a judge.
“I love the competition, I love the camaraderie of all the competitors,” Douglas said.
David “Bat” Masterson, of Daytona Beach, became the newest “Dad” on Saturday. The retired pilot beat 121 others in this year’s look-alike competition.
The peer group has grown over the years into a service organization with hundreds of members around the world that has funded more than $350,000 in scholarships for Florida Keys students. The organization also sponsors a youth baseball team in Cuba, where Hemingway moved after leaving Florida.
