As a graduate of The Citadel's Corps of Cadets, his experiences at The Citadel 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. 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. The novel was made into a
film of the same name in 1991. Directed by
Barbra Streisand, the film was nominated for seven
Academy Awards, including
Best Picture. 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. ==Military brat cultural identity and awareness movement==