I wrote the book, My Journey with Hemingway, for a number of reasons. First for my family, second for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park (EHFOP) and third for the Oak Park community to capture what volunteerism looks like and what can be done if you’re dedicated and committed to something near and dear to your heart. This book is a personal look at how it all began, how many wonderful people I met, and how many interesting experiences the journey created for me.
My journey with Hemingway formally began spending a college year abroad to discover Spain and Hemingway’s Europe after my high school reading of Ernest’s novel The Sun Also Rises, which is celebrating a century in print in 2026. But it truly began when I married Charlene Grandinetti Sisco and moved to Oak Park. Soon after, I was privileged to serve as EHFOP chairman for 11 years and executive director for four additional years during the foundation’s exciting early growth years. I did this while also continuing a career in the Association Management field. Sending archival materials to Ernest’s Cuba home museum (Finca Vigia) and bringing a foundation-sponsored group to Cuba and France led to a career change where I joined MILA Tours, specializing in bringing medical personnel to Central and South America (and the new Cuba market). Eventually, that led to my own company The Committee on Illinois (dba CubaTours4U) with a U.S. license (later renewed) to legally bring travelers to Cuba (20 years in total).
When I joined the Hemingway Foundation within months of its founding, the press continually quoted Hemingway as describing his hometown as a place of “broad lawns and narrow minds,” as if Oak Park, and by extension Chicago were a place he disliked. Newspaper writers and biographers often talked about his Michigan summers where he set many of his early short stories. But the family life, formal education and nature study in the other nine months of each year he spent at home were dismissed.
Subsequent research showed that he never made that infamous quote, although it may have succinctly summed up the attitude toward life in many U.S. small towns of the time. Ernest did say that he gave Oak Park a pass when it came to his writing, and that may have been correct as he often wrote stories using actual people, only changing their names late in the creative process.
So we had to work hard to bring attention to Hemingway’s time in Oak Park and eventually the information and insights gathered due to the foundation’s insistence were seen as major influencers in recognizing Oak Park’s importance in his growth as a person and artist.
Author and Oak Park native Ernest Hemingway is the most written about and studied 20th century American author with a regular stream of research papers, analysis, biographies, and literary travel pieces emanating monthly from the scholarly societies and print media. His stripped-down, verb-and-action writing style brought writers out of the Victorian age and generated a new way of creating literature, crime stories and even business reporting. And his adventurous persona (bullfight aficionado, big-game hunter in Africa, deep-sea record-setting fisherman in the Caribbean and so on) made him an influencer and magazine rock star of his age and an enduring legendary figure. Previously considered overly masculine, a new wave of women researchers are now writing extensively on the gender issues in his work.
Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises spoke to me at different life stages so perhaps its theme of a healing pilgrimage struck home as I wrote My Journey with Hemingway, which will be the subject of an author talk at the Hemingway Birthplace (339 N. Oak Park Ave.) on Thursday, June 18 at 7 p.m. Admission is free with cash bar available. Ken Trainor, Viewpoints Editor for Wednesday Journal and author of the book Our Town Oak Park, will moderate. As an aside, when sitting at our local Hemmingway’s Bistro with Ken and owner Christopher Ala, both stated that they too had personal “Journeys with Hemingway.” Perhaps you do as well. Feel free to share it with others that night.
Register your attendance at https://www.hemingwaybirthplace.com
Free Ticket Link: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/hemingwayfoundation/author-talk-my-journey-with-hemingway-with-scott-schwar.