Hemingway fans – can you help our archivists solve this puzzle? The documents pictured are from the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. We think it depicts a scene that took place shortly after Hemingway’s time as an American Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy in June and July of 1918. Any help is appreciated!
Happy Birthday Hemingway! In 1968, with a simple exchange of letters, Mary Hemingway and Jacqueline Kennedy arranged for Ernest Hemingway’s papers to be donated to the Kennedy Library. Their husbands never met, but had Hemingway’s health been better they would have, at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. Hemingway was among the American artists, writers, and musicians invited to attend the inauguration. A draft of the cable which Hemingway sent to President Kennedy from the Mayo Clinic shows Hemingway’s admiration for the President:
Watching the inauguration from Rochester there was happiness and the hope and the pride and how beautiful we thought Mrs. Kennedy was. Watching on the screen I was sure our President could stand any of the heat to come as he had taken the cold of that day. Each day since I have renewed my faith and tried to understand the practical difficulties of governing he must face as they arrive and admire the true courage he brings as our President in times as tough as they are for our country and the world.
July 21 - Ernest Hemingway 1923 Passport Photograph
Born Ernest Miller Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois, on July 21, 1899, Ernest Hemingway is regarded as one of the 20th century’s most influential writers. Hemingway used this 1923 passport for his return to Europe, where he initially worked as a correspondent for the Toronto Star.
This photo is from the Hemingway collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which contains 90 percent of existing Hemingway manuscripts as well as family scrapbooks, 10,000 photographs, and several thousand letters, making it the world’s principal center for research on Hemingway’s life and work.
