{"id":3962,"date":"2017-01-06T22:10:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T04:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=3962"},"modified":"2026-02-06T11:57:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:57:27","slug":"pat-conroy-was-my-favorite-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=3962","title":{"rendered":"Pat Conroy was my favorite writer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edited\u00a0repost I did on Pat Conroy some months ago.<\/h6>\n

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From the movie CONRACK- a first year teacher Pat Conroy, as white as the sand beaches of the island\u00a0of South Carolina on which his school sits, talks to his all black\u00a0class, 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. <\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Pat Conroy<\/a>: Gang, we\u2019re going to learn all these records. We\u2019re gonna look like geniuses when we know all these songs. Visitors are going to come here, expecting nothing but stupidity and poverty \u2013 I\u2019m going to switch on this record player \u2013 you\u2019re going to look those people right in the eye, and exclaim: \u201cAre you perchance\u2026 familiar with the works of Rimsky-Korsakov?\u201d We\u2019ll knock their behinds off\u2026 Now here we got something very sweet<\/em><\/span><\/strong>
\n[begins playing record]<\/em><\/span><\/strong>
\nPat Conroy<\/a>:<\/span> \u2026 Brahms\u2019 Lullaby. You don\u2019t need any Seconal, any Phenobarb, or any Miltown. You just drop this on, and The Sandman\u2019s got you.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pat Conroy passed\u00a0in March 2016\u00a0in his beloved Beaufort, South Carolina.\u00a0The author of works like \u201cThe Great Santini\u201d, \u00a0\u201cConrack\u201d, \u201cThe Prince of Tides\u201d, and the \u201cLords of Discipline\u201d was 70. Pancreatic cancer was the cause of his death.\u00a0 He was my favorite writer.<\/h4>\n

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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.\u00a0 The movie \u201cConrack\u201d was based on the book and hit the big screen in that first year of teaching for me.\u00a0\u00a0That 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Just as \u201cPat\u201d did in the movie and the novel.\u00a0 \u00a0Autobiographical in nature, a trait of Conroy\u2019s novels, it set the tone of how I did my business teaching of my children and, in time, become a competent and skilled instructor.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As Conroy suffered for some from his beliefs\u00a0(as brought out in his writings) through\u00a0discourse\u00a0by his family, his liberal and unbigoted views on his\u00a0beloved South, and the\u00a0beliefs of justice for all,\u00a0\u00a0his trail was not unique to the ones that fought the good fight of the day.\u00a0 His time was\u00a0difficult for him\u00a0as for\u00a0many on the path of right over wrong.\u00a0 The nation had to grow up after the previous tragedies of the 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 It was still a time of turmoil and the Reagan come-together regime was still some years in the future.\u00a0 The film still stands fresh, as does the novel it was derived, \u201cThe Water is Wide\u201d.<\/span><\/h4>\n

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\nI can say I have read everything thing this man has published.\u00a0 His books are a reflection on a time that has come and gone, and is coming back again.\u00a0 Not all that has gone and is\u00a0returning is bad. Conroy\u2019s last book, \u201cThe Death of Santini\u201d is a must read for closure for this author. First read \u201cThe Great Santini\u201d and if interested, his other major offerings. But in the end, read his novel on his father, the Great Santini.\u00a0 Life is never simple, never a paint by numbers, and sure as hell not as easy as eating a piece of mom\u2019s apple pie.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I sure would not have made thirty-seven years in the profession without his novels.\u00a0 That is for\u00a0god damn sure.<\/span><\/h4>\n

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Quote from the movie CONRACK when a small male student was given the business by an older student in the school\u2019s rest room. To his class and said with emotion:<\/em><\/h4>\n
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\nPat Conroy<\/a>: On the outside of every men\u2019s room in the world is the word \u201cGentlemen.\u201d I\u2019ll tell you what that means. A gentleman treats his fellow man with respect for his person and for his dignity. He doesn\u2019t slander his religion, his color or his pecker. And if he does any of these things around me, I\u2019m going to lay this fist \u2018longside his jaw.<\/em>
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\u00a0 This is an edited\u00a0repost I did on Pat Conroy some months ago.    …<\/p>\n

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