Thursday, April 1, 2010

For Whom The Bell Tolls.



















Anson Hemingway is our "you'll shoot your eye out" hero! Anson Tyler Hemingway, the son of Allen Hemingway and Harriet Louisa Tyler, was born in East Plymouth, Connecticut on August 26, 1844. The family came to Chicago in 1854 and within ten years all three Hemingway brothers had enlisted in the Civil War. Anson’s other two brothers died during the war. 

After his time in the military, Anson attended Wheaton College. After two years of study, as a friend and admirer of Dwight L. Moody, he went on to serve as general secretary of the Chicago YMCA for ten years before establishing a real estate business in Oak Park, Illinois.

Anson married fellow Wheaton student Adelaide Edmonds, who graduated in 1867. Together they had four sons and two daughters. An avid outdoorsman, Anson gave his grandson Ernest a special tenth birthday present of a 20-gauge shotgun, believed to have sparked the future author’s lifelong hunting pursuits. Anson Hemingway passed away in 1926 at the age of eighty-two. It was thought that the "theory of omission" or "Iceberg Theory" was taught to Ernest by his grandfather, who maybe should talked about more spiritual things that were below the surface.

Without Wheaton there probably wouldn't be any of these classics; Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Killers and To Have and Have Not. Nor would there be  inspired drinking binges to Key West, Cuba and wild nights in Pamplona for young adventure seekers. Of course Woody Allen's Manhattan would be a whole other thing without Mariel.

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