Dade City lawyer Jon Auvil claimed the 41st annual “Hemingway Look-Alike Contest” sponsored by the iconic Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West July 16. Auvil’s victory in the look-a-like contest ended eight years of competition and he says the real prize is membership in the “Papa” fellowship, and an opportunity to promote the competition’s lesser-known charitable efforts. The look-alike contest, a feature of the “Hemingway Days Festival,” began in 1981 for reasons not altogether literary or historical, Auvil acknowledges. “They came up with the concept because it is so miserably hot in Key West in July, and businesses were starving,” he said. “This has become the most profitable week of the year, at least for Sloppy Joe’s.”

Ernest Hemingway defined courage as “grace under pressure.”

Jonathan Auvil, a 64-year-old Dade City attorney, had it in spades on a recent Saturday when he boldly took the stage in a Key West bar — suffocating in a wool sweater in the merciless July heat — and calmly delivered a 120-second pitch.