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SALTSBURG -- Big game hunter, deep-sea fisherman, bullfighting enthusiast and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist -- every aspect of the life of literary icon Ernest Hemingway can be found along the walls or on the shelves of a new permanent library exhibit at The Kiski School in Saltsburg.

The newly dedicated Myers Hemingway Collection and Hemingway Studies Exhibit at the boys' college preparatory boarding school is a gift from a Southwestern Pennsylvania family: independent Hemingway scholar and collector Bob Myers and his twin sons, Bruce and David, who graduated from the school in 1979.

The collection contains 350 printed items including first editions of Hemingway novels, short stories, articles, journalism and biographical and critical works about the author. Library patrons also may view 65 DVDs containing film adaptations of Hemingway's works as well as educational films and scholarly lectures about the influential American writer.

The Myers family members all came to appreciate Hemingway independently -- the brothers while attending Kiski and their father while browsing in a bookstore during a business trip to Chicago in the 1980s. They've all since become serious book collectors, amassing thousands of volumes, including about 4,000 Hemingway titles.

Bruce Myers -- who is involved with his brother in Intellimedia Solutions, a publishing and marketing firm -- said the trio are among generations of readers who have been attracted by Hemingway's uncluttered prose: "His unique, direct style of writing in simple, declarative sentences is something we appreciate."

"We're also fascinated by the man, the myth and the persona," he noted, referring to Hemingway's larger-than-life exploits catching blue marlin in the Bahamas and going on safari in Africa -- experiences that fueled both his fiction and non-fiction writing.

When it came time for the Myerses to part with some of their duplicate Hemingway items to make room for more, Kiski's John A. Pidgeon Library seemed like the ideal place to house the overflow collection.

"We wanted it to be part of a teaching library that would be available to the Kiski community and to scholars," Bruce Myers said.

In addition to the books and DVDs, he said his family provided the library with the related exhibit that includes photos, posters and artifacts highlighting "Papa" Hemingway's writing career and his various sporting pursuits.

Mounted displays showcase items such as a fishing reel inscribed with Hemingway's signature, a bullfighter's sword from Toledo, Spain, and the cover of the 1933 premiere issue of Esquire magazine -- that included a contribution from Hemingway, for which he reportedly demanded and received twice the rate paid for other submissions.

"The reason we created the exhibit was to find some way to hook the kids into finding a reason to read Hemingway," Bruce Myers said. "If you can find a way to take an interest in the man, his life and times, that's the first step in getting kids to also want to read him."

Kiski librarian Leslie Poston agreed with that goal, noting the Hemingway collection, like other volumes in the library, is meant to be borrowed and used by students and faculty: "This is a working library for our boys. We want them to get their hands on this stuff and get into it."

The Hemingway books and exhibit are located in a second-floor special collections room that also houses the Helen Mason Moore Poetry Collection. Other collections that are planned for the room are to focus on presidential biographies and Kiski School yearbooks dating back to 1888.

"It's a nice space," Poston said, noting it also is used as an evening meeting place for a campus book club. At other times, "The kids come in if they want to do something quiet" or school projects that require them to record their voices.

To kick off the new collection, the Myerses also provided the Kiski library a temporary display of items on loan, including a set of foreign-language editions of Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize-winning novella "The Old Man and the Sea" and a print of a similarly titled painting that depicts an aged Hemingway, his fishing boat "Pilar" and the vessel's captain, Gregorio Fuentes.

The school also has highlighted the new Hemingway collection for its students, choosing as its recent all-school book "The Old Man and the Sea," which depicts the struggle of an aging Cuban fisherman to reel in a giant marlin. Students were asked to read the book over the summer break.

Poston noted interest in the collection has grown as a result of that reading assignment and a recent lecture on the Kiski campus by Hemingway scholar Dr. Linda Patterson Miller, a faculty member at Penn State-Abington.

Miller touched on Hemingway's series of stories about Nick Adams, a character that progresses from boyhood to manhood and that many feel parallels Hemingway's younger years.

For the most part, Poston noted, "He wrote those stories as a younger man," which may lend them a particular appeal for Kiski students.

In a statement, Kiski Headmaster Christopher Brueningsen reported, "The English and history teachers are embracing the collection and incorporating it into the curriculum."

More than simply focusing on Hemingway, the new collection places the author in context with other artists and writers in the post-World War I years who collectively have become known as the "Lost Generation." After being wounded as an ambulance driver in the war, Hemingway came to prominence in the following years while a member of an expatriate colony of American artists and writers living in Paris.

The Kiski exhibit is intended to grow and already has been augmented by the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the 1930s artwork of Gerald Murphy, credited by many as one of the first modern American painters.

It's the opinion of the Myerses and of Hemingway scholars who consulted on the project, that the Kiski collection devoted to the author may be unique in its depth and range at a high school-level institution.

"The Kiski collection project is unparalleled, and could ultimately make The Kiski School a research center for Hemingway scholarship," said Dr. Carroll Grimes, of the Division of Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.

The exhibit is open to Kiski students and faculty, their guests, alumni, parents and others seeking to research and learn more about Hemingway and the Lost Generation. To learn the collection's hours of availability, call 724-639-8043. A virtual tour of the exhibit is at www.intellimediasolutions.com/HSE.

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