NEW YORK – Patrick Hemingway, the sole surviving child of renowned author Ernest Hemingway, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 97. Inspired by his father, Patrick spent extensive periods in Africa and later managed various posthumous works by the celebrated Nobel laureate.
As the second of Ernest Hemingway’s three sons, Patrick Hemingway passed at his home in Bozeman, Montana. His grandson, Patrick Hemingway Adams, confirmed the news in a statement.
“My grandfather was truly unique: a grand paradox from an earlier time; a visionary with a scientific mind. Fluent in several languages and fond of solving complex mathematical puzzles, his true passion lay in the written and visual arts,” stated Adams.
While his brother Gregory had a complicated relationship with their iconic father, Patrick Hemingway was proud of his heritage. He often discussed his family name or supported projects that he believed could gain commercial success or critical acclaim. In the 2022 release, “Dear Papa: The Letters of Patrick and Ernest Hemingway,” father and son recount tales of hunting and fishing, expressing affection. The author tells Patrick, “I would rather fish with you and shoot with you than anybody that I have ever known since I was a boy and this is not because we are related.”
As his father’s literary executor, Patrick Hemingway oversaw the reissue of classics like “A Farewell to Arms” and “A Moveable Feast,” offering revised texts and additional commentary. The estate ventured beyond literature to launch a product line that included clothing, eyewear, rugs, and “Papa’s Pilar Rum,” which some Hemingway enthusiasts found unsettling.
Patrick’s most ambitious project was editing “True at First Light,” a fictionalized version of Ernest Hemingway’s African adventures in the mid-1950s, which the author left incomplete. Compiling the 1999 release from about 800 pages of manuscripts, Patrick reduced its length by more than half. Although greatly anticipated, “True at First Light” ultimately disappointed readers and critics, some of whom criticized Patrick for leveraging the family name.
Asked by NPR if he read his father’s work, Patrick replied: “Pretty often, because I have a commercial interest. … I have to read it in order to be competent in the marketing of it and the management of it.”
Hemingway managed a long life in a family haunted by suicide and mental illness: Ernest Hemingway’s father, Clarence, killed himself in 1928, and the author did the same in 1961. Gregory Hemingway suffered from alcoholism and depression and died in a jail cell in 2001 after being arrested for indecent exposure. Patrick’s half-niece, the actor and model Margaux Hemingway, died from an overdose of phenobarbital in 1996. (Jack Hemingway, the eldest son, died in 2000).
Inheriting his father’s round face and stocky build, Patrick Hemingway was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to Ernest Hemingway and the second of his four wives, Pauline Pfeiffer. Because the author rarely stayed in one place for an extended time, the Hemingways lived everywhere from Cuba and Spain to Wyoming and Key West, Florida during Patrick’s childhood (Ernest and Pauline divorced in 1940). Patrick Hemingway would recall his father’s various “trophy mounts” of animals hunted down on safari and how they were “tastefully distributed throughout every room” of their Key West house, including a wildebeest that hung in the bedroom of Patrick and Gregory.
The displays made East Africa a dream destination for Patrick, a “promised land.” After graduating from Harvard University, he used inheritance money to buy a farm in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), where he was a hunter, safari guide, educator and forestry officer in the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
Patrick Hemingway was married twice, to Henrietta Broyles and Carol Thompson, and had a daughter, Mina Hemingway, with his first wife. From the mid-1970s until his death, he was based in Bozeman. Ernest Hemingway spent his final years in the neighboring state of Idaho.
“Sometimes I think of him when I could just barely remember him, you know, when he was just someone who’d kissed you and you didn’t really want to be kissed because the whiskers were a little bit rough on your face,” Patrick told NPR in 2008. “And later on it was, you know, when he came to Africa … and we’d be riding at night just having fun, you know.
“I remember him in every stage of his life.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.
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