September 17, 2020
Volume 50 - No. 38
By Gary Womble
It was Sunday morning, July 2, 1961, and Ernest Hemingway known as “Papa” to his friends and family arose early that morning. He and his wife Mary had just returned to their summer home in Ketchum, Idaho, a few days earlier on June 30, 1961. On that early Sunday morning Ernest Hemingway went straight to the kitchen where the keys to the small gun storage room in the basement were hanging. Hemingway then as quietly as possible slipped down The Paper - 760.747.7119
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the stairs and into the basement where he opened the storage room. He chose his favorite shotgun, a W.C. Scott and Sons double-barrel 12 gauge. He then grabbed some shells, closed, and locked the door of the storage room and went back upstairs. He crossed the living room to a small entrance hall about five feet wide and six feet long with oak-panel walls and a tiled floor.
Once there Hemingway put a shell into each chamber of the W.C. Scott & Sons shotgun. Ernest lowered the gun butt to the floor leaning the
gun at a slight angle because of the barrel length. He put the barrels of the gun in his mouth, his right hand on the double triggers, and without hesitation he pulled them firing one barrel. Mary, who was asleep in the front bedroom heard what she said sounded like someone slamming a drawer loudly.
Ernest Hemingway, some say the greatest American author in U.S. history, had committed suicide just nineteen days short of his 62nd birthday. Mary found him in a robe and pajamas with the shotgun
beside him which had one chamber fired. He was covered in blood and quite literally unrecognizable.
Life Magazine erroneously reported that Hemingway used a Boss shotgun. But the gun was a W.C. Scott & Sons 12 gauge as mentioned in a book about Ernest’s firearms written by Silvio Calabi, Steve Helsley and Roger Sander. Both gun manufacturers shotguns have a price many thousands of dollars greater than what the average shotgun costs (e.g. Browning, Winchester). Hemingway’s entire
Hemingway’s Suicide - Why? See Page 2