Pat Conroy

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As a graduate of The Citadel's Corps of Cadets, his experiences there provided the basis for two of his best-known works, the novel The Lords of Discipline and the memoir My Losing Season. The latter details his senior year on the school's underdog basketball team, which won the longest game in the history of Southern Conference basketball against rival Virginia Military Institute in quadruple overtime in 1967.

His first book, The Boo, is a collection of anecdotes about cadet life centering on Lt. Colonel Thomas Nugent Courvousie, who had served as Assistant Commandant of Cadets at The Citadel from 1961 to 1968; Courvoisie was the inspiration for the fictional character Colonel Thomas Berrineau, a.k.a. "The Bear", in The Lords Of Discipline. Conroy began the book in 1968, after learning that Lt. Colonel Courvoisie had been removed from his position as assistant commandant and given a job in the warehouse; he paid to self-publish the book, borrowing the money from a bank.

After graduating from The Citadel, Conroy taught English in Beaufort, South Carolina; while there he met and married Barbara Jones, a young widow of the Vietnam War who was pregnant with her second child. He then accepted a job teaching children in a one-room schoolhouse on remote Daufuskie Island, South Carolina.

Conroy was fired at the conclusion of his first year on the island for his unconventional teaching practices, including his refusal to use corporal punishment on students, and for his lack of respect for the school's administration. He later wrote The Water Is Wide based on his experiences as a teacher. The book won Conroy a humanitarian award from the National Education Association and an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. It was also made into a feature film, Conrack, starring Jon Voight in 1974. Hallmark produced a television version of the book in 2006.

In 1976, Conroy published his novel, The Great Santini. The main character of the novel is Marine fighter pilot Colonel "Bull" Meecham, who dominates and terrorizes his family. Bull Meecham also psychologically abuses his teenage son Ben. The character is based on Conroy's father Donald. (According to My Losing Season, Donald Conroy was even worse than the character depicted in Santini.)

The Great Santini caused friction within the Conroy family, who felt that he had betrayed family secrets by writing about his father. According to Conroy, members of his mother's family would picket his book signings, passing out pamphlets asking people not to buy the novel. The friction contributed to the failure of his first marriage. However, the book also eventually helped repair Conroy's relationship with his father, and they became very close. His father, looking to prove that he was not like the character in the book, changed his behavior drastically.

According to Conroy, his father would often sign copies of his son's novels, "I hope you enjoy my son's latest work of fiction." He would underline the word "fiction" five or six times. "That boy of mine sure has a vivid imagination. Ol' lovable, likable Col. Don Conroy, USMC (Ret.), the Great Santini." The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1979, starring Robert Duvall.

Publication of The Lords of Discipline in 1980 upset many of his fellow graduates of The Citadel, who felt that his portrayal of campus life was highly unflattering. The novel was adapted for the screenplay of a 1983 film of the same name, starring David Keith as Will McLean and Robert Prosky as Colonel "Bear" Berrineau. The rift was not healed until 2000, when Conroy was awarded an honorary degree and asked to deliver the commencement address the following year. In 1986, Conroy published The Prince of Tides about Tom Wingo, an unemployed South Carolina teacher who goes to New York City to help his sister, Savannah, a poet who has attempted suicide, to come to terms with their past. Again, the novel was made into a film of the same name in 1991.

In 1995, Conroy published Beach Music, a novel about an American expatriate living in Rome who returns to South Carolina upon news of his mother's terminal illness. The story reveals his attempt to confront personal demons, including the suicide of his wife, the subsequent custody battle with his in-laws over their daughter, and the attempt by a film-making friend to rekindle old friendships which were compromised during the days of the Vietnam War.

In 2002, Pat Conroy published My Losing Season where he takes the reader through his last year playing basketball, as point guard and captain of the Citadel Bulldogs. The Pat Conroy Cookbook, published in 2004, is a collection of favorite recipes accompanied by stories about his life, including many stories of growing up in South Carolina. In 2009, Conroy published South of Broad, which again uses the familiar backdrop of Charleston following the suicide of newspaperman Leo King's brother, and alternates narratives of a diverse group of friends between 1969 and 1989.

In May 2013, Conroy was named editor-at-large of Story River Books, a newly created fiction division of the University of South Carolina Press. In October 2013, four years after being first publicized, Conroy published a memoir called The Death of Santini, which recounts the volatile relationship he shared with his father up until his father's death in 1998.

Conroy was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame on March 18, 2009.

Source

• 1973 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
• 1974 National Education Association Humanitarian Award
• 1978 Georgia Governor's Award for the Arts & Humanities
• 1981 Southern Regional Council Lillian Smith Book Award
• 1988 South Carolina Academy of Authors Inductee
• 1991 Writers Guild of America Award Nominee, Adapted Screenplay
• 1992 Academy Award Nominee, Adapted Screenplay
• 1992 University of Southern California Scripter Award Nominee
• 1993 American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award
• 1995 Thomas Cooper Medal for Distinction in the Arts & Sciences
• 1996 Georgia Commission on the Holocaust Humanitarian Award
• 1997 Omicron Delta Kappa honoris causa inductee at Auburn University at Montgomery
• 1997 University of South Carolina Honorary Doctorate
• 1999 Georgia Center for the Book Stanley W. Lindberg Award
• 2000 The Citadel Honorary Doctor of Letters
• 2001 James Beard Foundation Award for Journalism, Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes
• 2002 South Carolina Order of the Palmetto
• 2003 Thomas Wolfe Prize, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of English
• 2003 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Book of the Year Award
• 2004 Georgia Writers Hall of Fame Inductee
• 2005 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award
• 2006 Southeastern Library Association Outstanding Southeastern Author Award
• 2010 South Carolina Hall of Fame Inductee
• 2010 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor's Lifetime Achievement Award for the Arts
• 2014 Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce Palmetto Achievement Award