A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life

by Pat Conroy

  Eternally, I love you, Pat, always and forever, wherever you are, my beautiful, beautiful friend. I’m with you, my friend, inside you, of you, your heart, your soul, as you are with and in mine. Forever.

  The Great Conroy

  AN HOMAGE TO A SOUTHERN LITERARY GIANT AND A PRINCE OF A GUY

  RICK BRAGG

  SOUTHERN LIVING, MAY 2016

  He left the message every few months, the same message, word for word.

  “Bragg? This is Conroy. It is now obvious that it is up to me to keep this dying friendship alive. You do not write. You do not call. But I am willing to carry this burden all by myself. It is a tragedy. Ours could have been a father-son relationship, but you rejected that. And now it is all up to me, to keep this dying [bleep, bleep, bleepity, bleeping] friendship from fading away…”

  And then there would be a second or so of silence, before:

  “I love you, son.”

  That part always sounded real.

  I would always call back, immediately, but the voice mail just told me it was full, always full. I would learn, over decades, that it was full because I was not the only writer or friend he had adopted, or even the only one he left that same message of mock disappointment and feigned regret. But now and then I would actually be there when he called, and we would talk an hour or two about writers and language and why I should love my mother, and he would always, always tell me he had read my latest book, and how he was proud of me.

  Then he would tell me how he did not mind that I had neglected our friendship and that his broad shoulders could carry the weight of my indifference, and the phone would go dead.

  My God, I will miss that.

  Pat Conroy died on the edge of spring. I won’t try to add anything to the gilded language said over him; those who have read him know of the elegance there. I just know he was different from others at the top of this craft, different in his generosity. He was a champion, even for those who pretended not to need one.

  Some two decades ago, when my first book was just months from publication, he wound up with a bound galley and actually read it all, and sent a message to my publisher with his thoughts. We call such endorsements, inelegantly, “blurbs.” This was the best blurb ever written, lustrous and—now that I have had twenty years to consider it—undeserved.

  But a thousand people since have told me they read it because he told them to, and quote the last line of that blurb to me: “I wept when the book ended…and I sent flowers to his mother.”

  But it was what happened, months later, that mattered most. He and his soon-to-be wife, the fine writer Cassandra King, came to visit my mother in Alabama, and brought her half a German chocolate cake. (My mother was too kind to ask what happened to the other half.) As he left, he offered to take my mother and elderly aunts home with him. “I’ll cook for you,” he said. He told me later he was impressed by my big brother, and my sister-in-law.

  He looked in their faces and saw the utter absence of Old South pretension, and fell in love with that, too, a little bit.

  As he left, I knew I was now only the second most popular writer in our home; The Water Is Wide is my mother’s favorite book. Because of him, we see the good in Santini, and know that any man, no matter how wounded or damaged, can be a prince of tides. We will miss the words he had still to write.

  We will miss a damn sight more than that.

  Eulogy

  DELIVERED BY JUDGE ALEX SANDERS*

  MARCH 8, 2016

  ST. PETER’S CATHOLIC CHURCH, BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA

  Monsignor Cellini, Reverend Father MacNeil: Thank you for allowing me to speak today in St. Peter’s Church. The Spanish philosopher George Santayana said that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. I have always thought whoever heard that quote is condemned to repeat it. Kipling said the same thing: “If history were written as stories,” he said, “nobody would forget it.”

  Donald Patrick Conroy, born on October 26, 1945, was the best storyteller of our time—very possibly any time. We will never forget Donald Patrick Conroy.

  He came to live in South Carolina on orders of the United States Marine Corps. In 1961, his father, Colonel Donald Conroy, a Marine aviator who went by the nickname of the Great Santini—perhaps you’ve heard of him—received orders to report to the air station in Beaufort, South Carolina. Pat was sixteen years old and received this news with dread. He had been to ten schools in eleven years and Beaufort High School would become his third high school.

  When his mother drove her seven children into Beaufort County, none of them knew that they were driving toward his literary destiny and the reason all of you are here at this funeral today.

  As they crossed the Whale Branch Bridge, he caught his first glimpse of the tidal marshes of the Lowcountry. That vision remained with him all of his life, and he was a marsh-haunted boy from that moment in time. Remember the first sighting of the marsh in the opening frames of the movie The Prince of Tides, and remember how Barbra Streisand praises the inexpressible beauty of the landscape. Of course, those were Pat Conroy’s words. Both the book and the movie are love songs to South Carolina.

  His mother, Peg, died of cancer. She is buried in the National Cemetery in Beaufort, beside Colonel Conroy. Pat supported nothing more strongly than the Hollings Cancer Center at MUSC.

  He and The Citadel eventually kissed and made up and became great friends after a rocky relationship following publication of The Lords of Discipline. The Citadel has promised to stop using his books as kindling to heat the barracks.

  Pat told me that The Citadel was one of the big reasons he loved South Carolina and the Lowcountry. While other writers of his generation were going to fraternity or sorority parties, he spent his four college years reading during Evening Study Period. He became a member of the Dock Street Theatre, the Charleston Ballet, and the Symphony. He learned about the beauty and charm of cities by studying Charleston and Beaufort.

  Thirty years ago he wrote these words: “My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call,” the opening words of The Prince of Tides. He told me he didn’t know where those words came from or why a fictional character named Tom Wingo was saying them. But he knew at that moment his third novel had begun.

  These further words would soon follow:

  I would take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation. Scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocket knife, and feed it to you from the shell and say, “There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.” I would say “Breathe deeply,” and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life. That bold aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk and spilled wine, all perfumed with sea water.

  Through his eloquent words, he took us to that magical and unique place on earth.

  His was a turbulent personality, a complex mixture of joy and despair, but through it all, great love. He loved books and independent bookstores, especially the Old New York Bookshop. Imagine that. He loved his friends, his brothers and sisters, his children and stepchildren, his grandchildren, his legion of readers, who hung on his every word and were enchanted by his characters, the atmosphere of the South Carolina Lowcountry, and his stories—always his stories.

  But he loved no one more than Sandra, his steadfast wife, Cassandra King. She smoothed out the rough places for him and calmed the turbulence of his life. She loved him unconditionally, as he loved her. She brought him peace at last.

  Pat Conroy may have come to live among us involuntarily, but he stayed among us by choice and enriched us all for more than fifty years. Many of us saw ourselves reflected in his published words.

  Some of us he entertained grandly. Others of us he outraged greatly. To all of us, he gave a rare gift. He came to us from afar, like Faulkner and like Wolfe. But I respectfully suggest, in ways more real and more loving than either of th
em, that he gave to us the opportunity, in the phrase of Burns, “to see ourselves as others see us.” For this alone, we should be forever grateful to Pat Conroy, our very own prince of tides.

  “Good-night, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2.

  * * *

  * Alex Sanders is a former president of the College of Charleston and a former chief judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals.

  Man wonders but God decides

  When to kill the Prince of Tides.

  Please visit www.patconroyliterarycenter.org.

  A living tribute to Pat Conroy’s memory.

  Acknowledgments

  BY CASSANDRA KING

  So many devoted friends morphed into worker bees to make this book happen when I was in no condition to do much of anything after Pat’s illness and death. Although I can never adequately thank you, please know I am eternally grateful for your support and dedication to this project, born of shared grief but produced with tremendous love. On Pat’s behalf, I am deeply grateful to the following: Mihai Radulescu, Pat’s Prince of Romania, who had not only the vision for this book but also the willingness to see it through; Marly Rusoff, his extraordinary agent, advocate, and friend; Nan Talese, high priestess of the publishing world, Pat’s Maxwell Perkins; Todd Doughty of Doubleday, who is always there for us as he was for Pat; Maggie Schein, the Conroys’ way-overqualified assistant; and Margaret Evans, editorial assistant and researcher, steadfast through it all.

  Special thanks to the board of directors of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, who are working to keep his spirit of generosity and his memory alive for generations to come.

  And to the family: Carol; Mike and Jean; Kathy and Bobby Harvey; Jim and Janice; Tim and Terrye; Tom Conroy; Jessica, Bill, Stella, and Elise; Melissa, Jay, Lila, and Wester; Megan, Molly, Jack, and Katie; Susannah; Willie, Laura, and Baby-face Harvey; Rachel, Andy, and baby Kefonta; Michael Conroy; Barbara Conroy; the Harper boys; Gillespies; and Uncle Ed, Aunt Carol, and Conroy cousins.

  Jim, Liz, Alessandra, and Alina Ray; Jason, Liz, Sophia, Henry, Anna Jane, and Harper Ray; Jacob, Brenda, Lucas, and Olivia Ray; Tyler; Michael, Brooke, Amelia, Isabella, and Caiden Ray; Rebecca and Reggie Schuler; Eric, Kyle, Matt, Elliot Schuler and their families; Uncle Rex; the Floozy cousins; and Will and Alayna Hare.

  To our dear friends, whom Pat called the essentials:

  Janis and Wendell Owens, Bernie and Martha Schein, Aaron and Nancy Schein, Jonathan Hannah, Scott and Susan Graber, John Warley, Mike Jones, Pat Dinkler, Mina Trulow, Cliff and Cynthia Graubart, Ann Rivers Siddons, Terry and Tommie Kay, Sallie and Charlie Duell, Susu and Pug Ravenel, Alex and Zoe Sanders, Zoe Caroline and the boys, Judy and Henry Goldman, Dot and Peter Frank, Katherine and Brandon Clark, Kathie and Roy Bennett, Ellen Malphrus and Andy Fishkind, Patti Henry, Mary Alice Monroe, Marjory Wentworth, Ann Torrago, Hope Bach, Gay Talese, Carolyn Krupp, Eddie Birnbrey, Rachel Perling, Tricia Shannon, Ron and Ann Rash, Jim Landon, George Lanier, Ann and Claude Sullivan, Kathy and George Manning, Beverly Howell, Keturah Paulk, John Jeffers, Claire Simpson, Gregg and Mary Wilson Smith, Dot and Walt Gnann Jr., Wilson McIntosh, Jonathan and Lorene Haupt, Theresa Miller, Bill and Loretta Cobb, Tom and Carol Harris, Liz and Christian Sherbert, Lucius and Daryl Laffitte, Mike and Pat Roberts, Wendell and Florence Minor, Melinda and Jackson Marlette, and the Same Sweet Girls.

  Finally, in memory of Nancy Jane King, Elton King, Tim Belk, Heyward Siddons, Milbry Gnann, Doug Marlette, Julia Randel, Eugene Norris, Kate Brockman, Hammond Smith, Jane Lefco, Nugent “The Boo” Courvoisie, Julian Bach, Jay Harbeck, and Barbara Warley.

  Pat in the 1970s, when he lived in Atlanta.

  The Conroy family. In front: Tom (in mom Peg’s lap), Tim (standing next to her). In back: Mike, Jim, Kathy, Pat, Carol.

  Pat on Daufuskie Island, 1970.

  Pat and Cassandra were married by Judge Alex Sanders, May 31, 1998.

  The Great Santini with Pat on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1998.

  Pat and Bernie Schein, Pat’s closest friend since his Beaufort High School days.

  Pat with his daughter Susannah.

  Pat with grandchildren Jack, Katie, and Molly, and his daughter Megan.

  Grave of Pat Conroy at St. Helena Memorial Garden, March 2016.

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