Some time around 1969 while I was attending graduate school at Mississippi State, Uncle Ernest Kelly, pictured here, and Aunt Miriam stopped by Starkville and took me to lunch. He asked about American Literature, my major, and during the discussion I mentioned some prominent American writers including Ernest Hemingway. Uncle Ernest told me that he had operated on Hemingway's mother some years before and that she had given him a painting which they had discarded somewhere in their attic. He asked if I would like it.
A week or so later, he wrote that they had found the painting and decided they liked it after all. They hung the painting, on the wall behind Uncle Ernest, in a prime spot in their home in Memphis.
I was to inherit it but since one of their granddaughters is also an American Literature major, this picture is the closest I will come.
Aunt Miriam Herstein Kelly died this past April at the age of 104.
No comments:
Post a Comment