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Beaufort National Cemetery, located in the Lowcountry region of
South Carolina, would have been noteworthy even without its connection to local
literary lion Pat Conroy. One of six
national cemeteries established in 1863 for the reinterment of Union soldiers
and sailors who died in the region, it provided quiet and a final resting place
for servicemen who, during life, heard all too often the crunch of cannon and the
terrifying “rebel yell.” These youths, frequently thousands of miles from the Northern and Midwestern farms in which they had grown up, long moving with nomadic armies, had now found a most unlikely home for eternity.
Since then, in American conflicts up through the War
on Terror, more than 18,000 veterans have been buried on this site, according
to the National Park Service Website about the cemetery. That number is
expected to increase considerably, a function not just of the conflicts in
which the United States continually finds itself, but also of an increasing
number of veterans who come here in retirement.
I became aware of this historic, and beautiful, site
on a bus tour last November of the town of Beaufort. It was then that I not
only learned of the existence of this cemetery (and took this photo) but also
that this was the final resting place of Donald Conroy, the father of the
novelist.
Marine Corps Col. Donald Conroy is buried in Section
62, Site 182. Death may, in fact, have been the only thing to slow his restless
spirit.
This bluff, brash veteran received a host of medals for
his service in WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Yet amazingly, he seldom
spoke of all his honors to his family. Unfortunately, they knew him better for
the war at home he waged with his wife Peg, in which their children became
collateral damage.
The details of Donald Conroy’s life are found most directly, in fiction, in The Great Santini, but he also appears, in only slightly altered guise (as a
fisherman and judge), in other novels by his son (notably, The Prince of Tides).
As told in Pat’s memoir, The Death of Santini, the novelist eventually made a kind of peace
with this brave but very complicated man. Not long before his death, the
retired colonel came out to inspect where he would be laid to rest, telling the
surprised cemetery administrator that this would be “the second time I’ve been
buried” there. He then explained helpfully: “You ever catch the flick The Great Santini? That was me they
planted at the end of the movie.”
Oak trees and Spanish moss formed a majestic
backdrop to the row upon row of graves when I visited briefly. When Conroy
attended the burial of his father in May 1998, the ceremonial rites performed
by the military added to the majesty of the setting.
Even that, however, was
not without its irony, he observed: “The beauty of things military takes nearly
all of its children prisoner in its primal love of order, its ceremonies that
are timeless and changeless—they buried my father in the same cemetery where my
mother was laid to rest.”
The news of novelist Pat Conroy’s death from pancreatic cancer at age 70 this week filled me with
a sense of loss. It’s hard to think that we won’t be having another one of his
books—which, for all their occasional lapses into overheated prose, also exude real
storytelling power and insight into dysfunctional families (much like his own,
from which, he frankly acknowledged, he drew on for many of his characters in the likes of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini).
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