Pat Conroy was my favorite writer

This is an edited repost I did on Pat Conroy some months ago.

From the movie CONRACK- a first year teacher Pat Conroy, as white as the sand beaches of the island of South Carolina on which his school sits, talks to his all black class, kids that have never traveled ten miles across the water to the nearest town, Beaufort, SC. The kids are of elementary age upwards to higher junior high.  

Pat Conroy: Gang, we’re going to learn all these records. We’re gonna look like geniuses when we know all these songs. Visitors are going to come here, expecting nothing but stupidity and poverty – I’m going to switch on this record player – you’re going to look those people right in the eye, and exclaim: “Are you perchance… familiar with the works of Rimsky-Korsakov?” We’ll knock their behinds off… Now here we got something very sweet
[begins playing record]
Pat Conroy: … Brahms’ Lullaby. You don’t need any Seconal, any Phenobarb, or any Miltown. You just drop this on, and The Sandman’s got you.

Pat Conroy passed in March 2016 in his beloved Beaufort, South Carolina. The author of works like “The Great Santini”,  “Conrack”, “The Prince of Tides”, and the “Lords of Discipline” was 70. Pancreatic cancer was the cause of his death.  He was my favorite writer.

I first discovered .Pat Conroy when I was beginning my teaching career in a mostly black school in a disadvantaged part of Oklahoma City in 1974.  The movie “Conrack” was based on the book and hit the big screen in that first year of teaching for me.  That film became a significant one for me, giving some very valuable insights of the morality of teaching in general and working with the downtrodden in particular.  I was, in fact, not ready to teach a group of 5th grade students, and being only 21 at the time, was just not that ready to do that job. But with time and experience, things fell together.  Just as “Pat” did in the movie and the novel.   Autobiographical in nature, a trait of Conroy’s novels, it set the tone of how I did my business teaching of my children and, in time, become a competent and skilled instructor.  During my early adulthood, I too, had the same political views of the author, that being anti-war and one that supported racial equality for all.  As Conroy suffered for some from his beliefs (as brought out in his writings) through discourse by his family, his liberal and unbigoted views on his beloved South, and the beliefs of justice for all,  his trail was not unique to the ones that fought the good fight of the day.  His time was difficult for him as for many on the path of right over wrong.  The nation had to grow up after the previous tragedies of the 1960’s.  It was still a time of turmoil and the Reagan come-together regime was still some years in the future.  The film still stands fresh, as does the novel it was derived, “The Water is Wide”.

I can say I have read everything thing this man has published.  His books are a reflection on a time that has come and gone, and is coming back again.  Not all that has gone and is returning is bad. Conroy’s last book, “The Death of Santini” is a must read for closure for this author. First read “The Great Santini” and if interested, his other major offerings. But in the end, read his novel on his father, the Great Santini.  Life is never simple, never a paint by numbers, and sure as hell not as easy as eating a piece of mom’s apple pie.  The world is a more enlightened place for a twenty-year old first year teacher on the bad side of town, thanks to Pat Conroy.  I sure would not have made thirty-seven years in the profession without his novels.  That is for god damn sure.

Quote from the movie CONRACK when a small male student was given the business by an older student in the school’s rest room. To his class and said with emotion:

Pat Conroy: On the outside of every men’s room in the world is the word “Gentlemen.” I’ll tell you what that means. A gentleman treats his fellow man with respect for his person and for his dignity. He doesn’t slander his religion, his color or his pecker. And if he does any of these things around me, I’m going to lay this fist ‘longside his jaw.