BEAUFORT (WBTW) — Long-time South Carolina resident, bestselling author, and South Carolina Hall of Fame inductee Pat Conroy announced he has pancreatic cancer.
The 70-year-old posted the news on Facebook early Monday morning.
His post-already shared nearly 11,000 times with more than 4,000 comments-said in part: “I’ve spent my whole writing life trying to find out who I am and I don’t believe I’ve even come close. 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 fifteen.”
Conroy is a graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, and spent his first post-graduate years as a public school teacher on Daufuskie Island near Hilton Head Island. His experiences there with the mostly-African-American population led to the publishing of his second book The Water is Wide in 1972. It has twice been made into a movie. In subsequent years, his novels–based largely on his tumultuous upbringing in a Marine Corps family–would include The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides. Many of his books became hit movies with stars like Robert Duvall (Santini) and Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand (Prince of Tides)
In recent years, his novels Beach Music and South of Broad have become bestsellers, and focused on many of the same painful themes as his earlier work.
Nearly all of his stories are based in South Carolina. Conroy, when he was inducted into the S.C. Hall of Fame at Myrtle Beach Convention Center in 2009, told News13 that the Palmetto State plays a huge character in all of his stories, as it has his life.
“Everywhere I go in this state, there’s something different, something new,” he said. “If I go to Newberry College, if I go to the mountains, if I go to the lakes, people will tell stories from their area that I never dreamed of.”
As part of his Facebook post on Monday, Conroy promised to fight the illness and to continue working.
“I am grateful to all my beloved readers, my friends and my family for their prayers. I owe you a novel and I intend to deliver it,” he wrote.
