Donald Patrick “Pat” Conroy was born on October 26, 1945, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Marine officer from Chicago and mother from Alabama from whom he acquired a love for literature. He labeled himself “an Army brat” because the Conroys moved frequently to military bases, finally settling in Beauford, South Carolina when Pat was twelve. He attended The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.

Conroy’s first book, The Boo (1970), was a tribute to Lt. Col. Thomas Courvoisie, who served as a mentor to many Citadel cadets. Following graduation, he taught underprivileged children on Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina mainland, resulting in his book, The Water is Wide (1972), adapted as the film, Conrack, starring Jon Voight. In 1973, the Conroys moved to Atlanta, where he wrote The Great Santini (1976), and The Lords of Discipline (1980). Both became major hit movies, with Robert Duvall capturing an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Conroy’s abusive dad in The Great Santini.

Conroy married Barbara Jones in 1969, but they divorced in 1977. He then married Lenore Fleischer in 1981, and the couple moved from Atlanta to Rome, where Conroy wrote The Prince of Tides (1986) and Beach Music (1995). After his divorce from Fleischer, Conroy’s marriage to the novelist Cassandra King in 1998 represented a major shift in his life and work. He wrote My Losing Season (2002), South of Broad (2009), My Reading Life (2010), and The Death of Santini (2013). Conroy’s many literary awards included the Georgia Governor’s Award for Arts (1978), the Southern Regional Council’s Lillian Smith Award for Fiction (1981), and the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust’s Humanitarian Award (1996).

Those are the facts; here is the person. Pat Conroy was a master storyteller, mixing the raw material of his tumultuous family life with the peaceful landscape of coastal South Carolina. He wrote, he would say, to explain his own life to himself. In one interview he commented, “Writing has been not just therapeutic for me, but it has been essential. I have written about my mother, my father, my family…and if I get it on paper, I have named the demon.”

Conroy said of his studies at The Citadel: “I’m great on military science. But I missed all the classes on ‘Is this a great technique for fiction?’ I never learned any of that stuff.” Nan Talese was Pat Conroy’s editor for the past 35 years—a span that witnessed Conroy’s book sales reach over 20 million copies worldwide. She recalled the first thing Conroy said to her when they met. “I will tell you, if there are ten words for something, I will use all ten. Your job is to take them out.”

The Pat Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort summed up Conroy’s life this way: “Pat started his working life as a teacher; however, he went on to become one of America’s best loved writers, revered for his extraordinary storytelling abilities, his truth-telling courage, and his great heart. Perhaps his ultimate and enduring gift is to simply remind us of the remarkable ability of one person, using the transformative power of words, to significantly alter our universe.” Conroy died of pancreatic cancer on March 4, 2016. He was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2004.