Sun Valley, Ida.
Ernest Hemingway, 61, the bearded American novelist who gained fame writing of death and violence, accidentally killed himself Sunday while cleaning a shotgun, his wife said.
Mrs. Hemingway, the “Miss Mary” who accompanied him on his world travels, was asleep upstairs. She was awakened by the shot, found the body and summoned a doctor to their home at Ketchum, near here.
Then she called Chuck Atkinson, a family friend, and asked him to put out a statement that the creator of “Farewell to Arms,” “The Old Man and the Sea” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was dead.