Posted on 09/22/2003 4:15:35 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Patrick Hemingway hadn't seen his father in more than a year when the two met at a Missoula, Mont., motel in June 1996.
The son knew things would be different. Still, he didn't know exactly how different, until he saw Gregory Hemingway -- doctor, writer, elephant-slayer and son of Ernest -- perched on a bed in a dirty-blonde wig, a blue dress, pearl necklace and high-heeled pumps. He'd had a sex change.
''It was a little unsettling,'' Patrick recalls. ``I didn't know how to address him.''
The anguish over gender identity that drove Gregory Hemingway to become Gloria Hemingway has outlived him to become a bitter legal battle between Gregory's eight children and Gloria's wife. They are fighting over his estate.
At issue are the types of questions rarely arbitrated in a South Florida courtroom: When he died Oct. 1, 2001, at the Women's Annex of the Miami-Dade County Jail, was Gregory the sex he was born into, or the one into which he changed? And, if Hemingway was, indeed, a woman, could the marriage to another woman be legally valid?
Florida law does not recognize same-sex marriages, which could nullify a will leaving much of Hemingway's estate to Ida Hemingway, whom he married in 1992, divorced in 1995, and then remarried in 1997, after having undergone the sex change. (The ceremony, conducted by a judge, took place in Washington state and Hemingway is identified as Gregory on the marriage certificate.)
ABOUT $7 MILLION
These are not small questions. The estate of Gregory Hemingway contains about $7 million.
A 1994 will, submitted for probate on Oct. 30, 2001 by Gregory's children, leaves most of his estate to five of the kids. But another will, submitted eight months later by Ida Hemingway, leaves the bulk of his assets to her. Her attorney claims the will is an expression of Gregory's desire to provide for her, regardless of the validity of the marriage.
At a hearing last month, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Arthur Rothenberg gave attorneys 45 days to write briefs before he decides whether to accept the later will.
''You may hear argument about this marriage not being a valid marriage,'' Nicholas Cristin, a Miami attorney for Ida Hemingway, said at an April hearing. ``These two people certainly thought they were married.''
Joe Gonzalez, an attorney for some of Gregory's children, argued, however, that both Ida and Gregory Hemingway also thought they were women.
''[Gregory] had female genitalia,'' Gonzalez said. ``So two people with female genitalia married each other. I suspect that, under the law, that's not a valid marriage.''
Rothenberg's decision almost certainly will blaze new trails in an already evolving legal landscape in Florida.
Last February, a senior family court judge in Pinellas County ruled that a transsexual named Michael Kantaras -- who had been born Margo Kantaras -- was legally a man and granted Kantaras custody of an adopted child, and a second child conceived with his wife through donated sperm.
The dispute between Ida Hemingway and Gregory's children is contained in hundreds of pages of court pleadings and sworn statements at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse. The records suggest that underlying the battle of Gregory's estate lies a long-simmering resentment.
Ida and Gregory Hemingway had been married, though the marriage was on rocky terrain, in late September 2001 when Gregory left the couple's Bozeman, Mont., ranch for Miami. On Sept. 26, he was arrested for indecent exposure in Key Biscayne while walking down the road naked, a pair of women's pumps in his hand; he died Oct. 1, 2001, of heart failure, found slumped on the floor of the Women's Annex.
An obituary days later in Time magazine eulogized the son of Ernest Hemingway, one of America's most masculine writers, as ``Gloria Hemingway.''
Ida accuses some of the children of abandoning a father they considered unseemly.
The children accuse Ida of exploiting a man who was sick and dependent, persuading him to disinherit his own children -- as his father had done to him.
Ida, who met Hemingway at a party in Coconut Grove celebrating the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamploma, Spain, reserves her most biting comments for Lorian Hemingway, the oldest of Gregory Hemingway's children, and a successful storyteller in her own right. Her 1998 Walk on Water was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
In a March 14 deposition, Ida Hemingway called the memoir a ''crummy book'' that sought to exploit her father's ``weaknesses.''
''Her description of him . . . being dirty and greasy-haired and his car [being] full of beer cans -- that is not a nice light to put your father in,'' Ida said.
In her sworn statement, Lorian insists her father, who authored the 1976 bestseller Papa: A Personal Memoir, had sought late in life to make peace with his children.
''Ida would not allow my father to have contact with his children [and] tried to keep him from being in touch with his children and with his friends.'' she said in a sworn statement.
'She kept him from receiving what he needed in jail and said, `let him rot in jail,' '' Lorian said. 'You know, `Let him stay there. Maybe this will teach him a lesson.' ''
OFTEN DEPRESSED
Patrick Hemingway, a professional photographer from Vancouver, said in court papers his father, who suffered from bipolar disorder and often was depressed, remained with Ida because he feared he could not take care of himself alone.
''Ida was very abusive to my father, and they argued a lot,'' he wrote. ``He would confide in me that Ida did not love him, and when Ida would come in the room he would change the subject.''
Patrick said he was particularly surprised -- and disappointed -- by the latter will because Ida had assured him in 1996 that Gregory Hemingway did not intend to disinherit his children -- Lorian, Brendan, Vanessa, Sean, Edward, Patrick, John and Maria.
'She said, `I've seen the will. Don't worry, you kids will all be taken care of.' I thought this strange, because I was not worried,'' Patrick said.
That is why he/she was arrested.
Girl: (crying)
I thought you were so rugged!
When life imitates Monty Python... hey, wasn't Hemingway (Ernest) originally dressed as a girl when he was small... his mother wanted a girl. Or perhaps I am confusing him with some other "rugged" writer who whelped a perverse family.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I'd slap the subjects myself, but tastes vary.
"To Have and Have Not"
"A Farewell to [CENSORED]"
Yep. That sounds like a Hemingway.
The descendants of Ernest Hemingway have been plagued by the usual ills of trash culture: drug overdoses, perverted sex, and premature death.
I'm a firm believer individual responsibility for one's life; but sometimes it does seem that the sins of the father are visited upon his young.
And look at this bit:
Rothenberg's decision almost certainly will blaze new trails in an already evolving legal landscape in Florida.
No, it isnt. Lots of what some females think they are, are really XY, or XXy, or XYY, (e.g.like the actress Jamie Lee Curtis), if they ever got their chromosomes checked. It happens more often than you think. It is not rare at all to have mixed up chromosomes: different than the normal xx or xy.
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