MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- The brother of Ernest Hemingway committed suicide with a gun, just as his father and famed brother did before him, officials said Tuesday.
Leicester Hemingway, a 67-year-old writer, was found dead of a wound to the head in his Miami Beach home Monday. Family members, who said he used a borrowed pistol, reported he had been depressed because of health problems.
Ernest Hemingway, author of such works as 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and 'The Sun Also Rises,' shot himself in the head with a shotgun in 1961. The father of the two writers, Dr. Edmonds Hemingway, also took his life with a gun he had inherited from his father.
Illness was the apparent reason in all three instances.
'His (Leicester's) family said he had been despondent because of past operations and the prospect of more operations,' said police spokesman Tom Hoolahan.
Leicester Hemingway, an ardent fisherman and author, had undergone surgery twice within one month to implant artificial arteries in his legs and for removal of his prostrate gland, a spokesman for the family said. He had discussed suicide because he feared he faced more operations, he said.
'In June he had the first implant cleaned out. It was at this point that he began to feel there was not too much hope of saving his legs,' said the spokesman who asked not to be identified.
A freelance writer who had articles published in Writer's Digest and numerous magazines for men, Hemingway was the author of six books, including a biography of his more famous brother. He also published The Bimini Out Island News, a small fishing report.
He described the newspaper as 'the smallest newspaper in the world' and 'the only newspaper that takes two editions to wrap a bonefish.'
Surviving are his wife, Doris; two daughters, Anne Hemingway Feuer, and Hilary Hemingway, both of Miami; two sons by a previous marriage, Peter of Saskatchewan, Canada, and Jake of Maryland; and two sisters, Sunny Miller of Michigan, and Carol Gardner of New Hampshire.
His funeral was scheduled for Thursday morning at St. John's United Methodist Church on Miami Beach. His body was to be cremated.