At a presentation about our novel, Hemingway’s Island, we met a most interesting man, Dr. David Goicoechea, of Ketchum, Idaho (Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Brock University, St. Catharine’s, Ontario, Canada)
During the Q&A, David explained that Hemingway came to Ketchum, to the Sun Valley Lodge, the same year that David was born, 1938. He saw Hemingway lots of times over the years, for Ketchum is a small place and Hemingway was often around. David recalled meeting Hemingway in the Christiana Restaurant in the fall of 1960, and he made the observation that Hemingway in his last year was affable and sociable.
Along with these personal encounters was David’s claim that his brother was one of the two acolytes at Hemingway’s funeral. It was a Roman Catholic funeral Mass and the young lad had therefore eaten no breakfast; consequently, he fainted into the flower bed. If you google the image of Hemingway’s funeral, you can see that one of the acolytes was supported by the man beside him.
Finally, David claimed that his father, one of the town garbage men, was asked by Mary Hemingway to come to the Topping House to help clean up the blood and mess from Hemingway’s suicide.
What I find most fascinating about all these details is that I do not recall reading about the Goicoechea family in the Hemingway biographies. David is a most engaging man, a bit of a raconteur who writes his own stories and memoirs. We found David’s story intriguing and want to share his family’s Hemingway connection here on our blog.