Pat Conroy: Military Brat

Pat Conroy is a renowned American author. His works have been enjoyed by avid readers across the globe, The Great Santini, Prince of Tides, and My Losing Season are among his most well-known titles. Although these novels are works of fiction; many don’t realize that each one of his novels is deeply infused with his own personal life experiences. 

Pat Conroy was born into a military family in Atlanta, Georgia on October 26, 1945. As a young boy saddled with a violently abusive military father, Conroy and his siblings were moved frequently from city to city. By age 15, Pat Conroy had attended 11 different schools.

He leaned heavily on literature as comfort in an ever-changing world. By the time the Conroy family finally settled in Beaufort, South Carolina; Conroy had found another outlet for his traumas: sports.

He started his high school career in Beaufort playing on the school’s varsity basketball team where he excelled as one of their star players. By the time he was ready to go to college, the Citadel offered him a partial basketball scholarship. He played basketball all throughout college while studying English. He graduated from the Corps of Cadets with an English degree under his belt, along with the experiences that inspired his first two major novels; My Losing Season, which focused on his senior-year basketball season, and  The Lords of Discipline, which paid homage to his Cadet years. 

Each one of his earlier works features a terrifying father figure, which was the manifestation of the traumas he endured at his father’s hands. His father would often sign copies of his son’s novels, saying; “I hope you enjoy my son’s most recent work of fiction” with the word “fiction” being underlined as many as six or seven times. Despite the invalidation from his father, Conroy continued to use his novels as a way to process his life’s experiences. It was this personal touch in each of his novels that made his writing relatable to many, especially those who grew up in military environments. 

When Donna Musil’s documentary, Brats: Our Journey Home was in the making, Pat Conroy authorized much of his writings to be used during filming. His contribution to this popular documentary at the time shed light on the otherwise ignored “military brat subculture”. It was also during the filming of this documentary that Conroy himself was able to make his way home, to the arms of thousands of other military brats just like him. He found a family and a safe place that he hadn’t known existed. 

“We spent our entire childhoods in service of our country, and no one even knew we were there.” -Pat Conroy (1945-2016)