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 Conroy, who had announced in a Feb. 15 Facebook post that he had
pancreatic cancer, died at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina,
surrounded by family and loved ones, said Todd Doughty, a spokesman
for Doubleday.
“The water is wide and he has now passed over,” said his wife,
novelist Cassandra King Conroy.
Much of Conroy's work was inspired by a dark muse - his father, U.S.
Marine Colonel Donald Conroy. The elder Conroy was a fighter pilot
who fought in four wars - World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War and the long-running conflict with his family. He was a tyrant
who beat his wife and children.
"I remember hating him even when I was in diapers," Conroy wrote in
the prologue of "The Death of Santini," the memoir that put to rest
his feelings about his father, as well as serving as a postscript to
the novel "The Great Santini."
Hollywood loved the emotional aspects of Conroy's works and "The
Water Is Wide," "The Prince of Tides" and "Lords of Discipline," as
well as "The Great Santini," were all made into successful movies.
 Conroy once told People magazine that his books were an effort to
explain his life to himself, which was a complicated undertaking.
He was one of seven children in a family that, due to his father's
military assignments, moved 23 times before he was 18.
Conroy's mother did not know how to deal with his father much beyond
designating hiding places for the children to run to when a rampage
started. As the oldest child, Conroy often tried to intervene when
trouble started, which meant that he would took the brunt of his
father's cruelty.
Later in life, as he exposed the ugly side of his family in his
books, Conroy became estranged from some siblings who he said were
in denial about the early days. Some family members were so upset by
"The Great Santini" that they picketed his book-signing appearances.
In "Why We Write About Ourselves," a book about memoirists, Conroy
said he actually played down his father's abuse in his books.
"I wasn't yet prepared to say he beat us half to death and left us
in the driveway," he said. "I had trouble getting people to believe
me."
The two reached something of a reconciliation before the elder
Conroy died in 1998 and the father would sometimes attend
book-signings with his son and autograph books as "The Great
Santini."
Despite his literary success, Conroy would struggle through
alcoholism, depression and two failed marriages. Like four of his
siblings, he attempted suicide.
"My family is my portion of hell, my eternal flame, my fate, and my
time on the cross," Conroy wrote in "Death of Santini."
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Conroy was a teenager when his father was assigned to a military
base in Beaufort, South Carolina, and the state would become the
setting for many of his books, as well as his long-time home.
"It was in Beaufort in sight of a river's sinuous turn and the
movements of its dolphin-proud tides that I began to discover myself
and where my life began at 15," he wrote on Facebook in announcing
his cancer.
Conroy graduated from The Citadel, a military college in South
Carolina that he attended to appease his father, and his novel "The
Lords of Discipline" explored the physical and mental abuse heaped
on students there. "My Losing Season" was a memoir about his
experiences on the school's basketball team.
Instead of a military career, Conroy became a teacher on isolated,
impoverished Daufuskie Island, where many of his students were
illiterate and direct descendants of slaves. He was fired after a
year because of his maverick approach to teaching and fights with
administrators but came away with material for "The Water Is Wide,"
which was made into the movie "Conrack."
The 1986 novel "Prince of Tides" also bore resemblances to Conroy's
life - a man trying to overcome the psychic trauma from life in a
troubled family. The movie version starred Nick Nolte and Barbra
Streisand.
Conroy cleaned up his lifestyle in his mid-60s after dealing with
diabetes, escalating weight, high blood pressure and a failing
liver. He lost weight, quit drinking, began eating healthily and
joined his personal trainer in opening a fitness studio in Port
Royal, South Carolina.
"He will be cherished as one of America’s favorite and bestselling
writers, and I will miss him terribly,” his longtime editor Nan A.
Talese of Doubleday said in a statement.
Conroy was married three times.
(Reporting and writing by Bill Trott; Additional reporting by
Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Kim Coghill and Nick Macfie)
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