at her first assignment for the Red Cross at the Army Hospital, she met Hemingway. She was seven years his senior, he only 19, but they became engaged. However, several months after he had returned to the United States, in March of 1919, she rejected him through a letter informing him that she was engaged to an Italian officer (later disclosed as Domenico Caracciolo). After a year in New York, she was sent by the American Red Cross to Romania for two years. Another two years in New York followed, before she went to Haiti. There she served as director of nurses for Haiti's Public Health Service. Inspiration for Hemingway Agnes's identity as the basis for the fictional character "Catherine Barkley" in Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms was not widely known until Hemingway's brother, Leicester, published a book in 1961 about his brother. Leicester visited Agnes in Key West (where von Kurowsky had moved with William Stanfield, and worked as a librarian) while researching his book. Agnes gave him some photographs from her scrapbook that now reside at the Hemingway Foundation. Personal life Agnes von Kurowsky was married twice, but not to the Italian officer for whom (she wrote) she broke her engagement with Hemingway. She married Howard Preston ("Pete") Garner on November 24, 1928, while stationed with the Red Cross in Haiti. After her Haitian assignment was completed, she obtained a quick divorce. She married for the second time to William Stanfield in 1934. Stanfield was a hotel manager and widower with three children. During World War II, her husband and her stepson served in the United States Navy. Agnes and her two stepdaughters went to New York City, where she worked at the Red Cross Blood Bank on Fifth Avenue. She remained married to Stanfield until her death in Gulfport, Florida, on November 25, 1984, at the age of 92. The cause of her death was not reported; her body was buried in the United States Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. She was honored for "her gallant and commendable services" with the American Red Cross during World War I. References Sources Baker, Carlos (1969). Ernest Hemingway: a Life Story, Scribners Bell, Millicent. "A Farewell to Arms: Pseudoautobiography and Personal Metaphor", in Ernest Hemingway, the Writer in Context, Nagel, James (ed.) (1976). Univ. of Wisc. Press Hemingway, Leicester (1961). My Brother, Ernest