Pat Conroy
10-26-1945 - 3-4-2016
RIP
The movie, Prince of
Tides, also won him an Academy Award nomination in 1991.
Conroy lived many places during his life, but called South Carolina home
where he was born on October 26, 1945, the oldest of seven children. The family moved extensively during his
childhood because his dad was an aviator in the military. He flew fighter planes and was very hard on
Pat while he was growing up. He made him
attend the Citadel, which was the last thing he wanted to do, but he avoided
the draft and wrote a blog at that time about being an anti-war activist. He saw eight of his Citadel friends killed in
the Vietnam War. He said “they walked
off the stage and directly into the Vietnam War.”
Pat Conroy’s memoir, The
Death of Santini, reflects on the struggles between him and his father. After the movie, The Great Santini, came out his father claimed responsibility for
boosting the career of Robert Duvall, the main character. Duvall had already starred in the “Godfather”
movies so this wasn’t entirely true, but gives one a sense of what a
controlling man his father was.
Later the book did help to achieve peace between father and
son.
The author was married three times and leaves behind two
daughters. He battled a number of health
problems including diabetes, high blood pressure and a failing liver. During his life, he suffered from depression, divorce, back
surgery and the suicide of a younger brother.
But he succumbed to pancreatic cancer on Friday, March 4 2016. He will be missed.
