Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway, 1918.

Ernest Hemingway recuperating from war wounds

Ernest Hemingway recuperating from war wounds

Ernest Hemingway at the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan, recuperating from wounds received while driving an ambulance at the front, 1918.

Agnes von Kurowsky and Ernest Hemingway

Agnes von Kurowsky and Ernest Hemingway

Agnes von Kurowsky and Ernest Hemingway, Milan, Italy, 1918.

The first son of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace Hall Hemingway, Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in a suburb of Chicago. He was educated in the public schools and began to write in high school, where he was active and outstanding, but the parts of his boyhood that mattered most were summers spent with his family on Walloon Lake in upper Michigan. On graduation from high school in 1917, impatient for a less-sheltered environment, he did not enter college but went to Kansas City, where he was employed as a reporter for the Star. He was repeatedly rejected for military service because of a defective eye, but he managed to enter World War I as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. On July 8, 1918, not yet 19 years old, he was injured on the Austro-Italian front at Fossalta di Piave. Decorated for heroism and hospitalized in Milan, he fell in love with a Red Cross nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, who declined to marry him. These were experiences he was never to forget.

Hemingway's parents reportedly had an unconventional arrangement, in which Grace, an ardent feminist, would agree to marry Ed only if he could assure her she would not be responsible for the housework or cooking. Ed acquiesced; in addition to his busy medical practice, he ran the household, managed the servants, and even cooked meals when the need arose.

Ernest Hemingway grew up with four sisters; his much-longed-for brother did not arrive until Ernest was 15 years old. Young Ernest enjoyed family vacations at a cottage in northern Michigan where he developed a love of the outdoors and learned hunting and fishing from his father. His mother, who insisted that all of her children learn to play an instrument, instilled in him an appreciation of the arts.

In high school, Hemingway co-edited the school newspaper and competed on the football and swim teams. Fond of impromptu boxing matches with his friends, Hemingway also played cello in the school orchestra. He graduated from Oak Park High School in 1917.