COLONEL
DON CONROY'S EULOGY
by Pat Conroy
- his son |
The children of fighter pilots tell different
stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell
a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu
shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft
carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea.
Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries
in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the
mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground.
Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked
at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars,
while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily
courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir,
and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North
Korean battalion.
We tell of men who made widows of the
wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children.
You don't like war or violence? Or napalm?
Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky?
Then let's talk about your fathers,
not ours. When we talk about the aviators who raised us and the Marines
who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to
have been America's enemies when our fathers passed overhead".
We were raised by the men who made the
United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century
in all recorded history.
Our fathers made sacred those strange,
singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima,
Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up
attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles.
Your fathers made communities like Beaufort
decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for
democracy.
We have gathered here today to celebrate
the amazing and storied life of Col. Donald Conroy who modestly called
himself by his nomdeguerre, The Great Santini.
There should be no sorrow at this funeral
because The Great Santini lived life at full throttle, moved always in
the fast lanes, gunned every engine, teetered on every edge, seized every
moment and shook it like a terrier shaking a rat.
He did not know what moderation was
or where you'd go to look for it. Donald Conroy is the only person I have
ever known whose self-esteem was absolutely unassailable. There was not
one thing about himself that my father did not like, nor was there one
thing about himself that he would change. He simply adored the man he was
and walked with perfect confidence through every encounter in his life.
Dad wished everyone could be just like him.
His stubbornness was an art form. The
Great Santini did what he did, when he wanted to do it, and woe to the
man who got in his way. Once I introduced my father before he gave a speech
to an Atlanta audience. I said at the end of the introduction, "My father
decided to go into the Marine Corps on the day he discovered his IQ was
the temperature of this room".
My father rose to the podium, stared
down at the audience, and said without skipping a beat, "My God, it's hot
in here! It must be at least 180 degrees".
Here is how my father appeared to me
as a boy. He came from a race of giants and demi-gods from a mythical land
known as Chicago. He married the most beautiful girl ever to come crawling
out of the poor and lowborn south, and there were times when I thought
we were being raised by Zeus and Athena.
After Happy Hour my father would drive
his car home at a hundred miles an hour to see his wife and seven children.
He would get out of his car, a strapping flight jacketed matinee idol,
and walk toward his house, his knuckles dragging along the ground, his
shoes stepping on and killing small animals in his slouching amble toward
the home place.
My sister, Carol, stationed at the door,
would call out, "Godzilla's home!" and we seven children would scamper
toward the door to watch his entry.
The door would be flung open and the
strongest Marine aviator on earth would shout, "Stand by for a fighter
pilot!"
He would then line his seven kids up
against the wall and say,
"Who's the greatest of them all?"
"You are, O Great Santini, you are."
"Who knows all, sees all, and hears
all?"
"You do, O Great Santini, you do."
We were not in the middle of a normal
childhood, yet none of us were sure since it was the only childhood we
would ever have.
For all we knew other men were coming
home and shouting to their families, "Stand by for a pharmacist," or "Stand
by for a chiropractor".
In the old, bewildered world of children
we knew we were in the presence of a fabulous, overwhelming personality;
but had no idea we were being raised by a genius of his own myth-making.
My mother always told me that my father
had reminded her of Rhett Butler on the day they met and everyone who ever
knew our mother conjured up the lovely, coquettish image of Scarlet O'Hara.
Let me give you my father the warrior
in full battle array. The Great Santini is catapulted off the deck of the
aircraft carrier, SICILY.
His Black
Sheep squadron is the first to reach the Korean Theater and American
ground troops had been getting torn up by North Korean regulars.
Let me do it in his voice: "We didn't
even have a map of Korea. Not zip. We just headed toward the sound of artillery
firing along the Naktong River. They told us to keep the North Koreans
on their side of the Naktong. Air power hadn't been a factor until we got
there that day. I radioed to Bill Lundin I was his wingman. 'There they
are. Let's go get'em.' So we did."
I was interviewing Dad so I asked, "how
do you know you got them?"
"Easy," The Great Santini said. "They
were running - it's a good sign when you see the enemy running.
There was another good sign."
"What was that, Dad?"
"They were on fire."
This is the world in which my father
lived deeply. I had no knowledge of it as a child.
When I was writing the book The Great
Santini, they told me at Headquarters Marines that Don Conroy was at one
time one of the most decorated aviators in the Marine Corps. I did not
know he had won a single medal. When his children gathered together to
write his obituary, not one of us knew of any medal he had won, but he
had won a slew of them.
When he flew back toward the carrier
that day, he received a call from an Army Colonel on the ground who had
witnessed the route of the North Koreans across the river. "Could you go
pass over the troops fifty miles south of here? They've been catching hell
for a week or more. It'd do them good to know you flyboys are around."
He flew those fifty miles and came over
a mountain and saw a thousand troops lumbered down in foxholes. He and
Bill Lundin went in low so these troops could read the insignias and know
the American aviators had entered the fray.
My father said, "Thousands of guys came
screaming out of their foxholes, son. It sounded like a world series game.
I got goose pimples in the cockpit. Get goose pimples telling it forty-eight
years later. I dipped my wings, waved to the guys. The roar they let out.
I hear it now. I hear it now."
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, my
mother took me out to the air station where we watched Dad's squadron scramble
on the runway on their bases at Roosevelt Road and Guantanamo.
In the car as we watched the A-4's take
off, my mother began to say the rosary.
"You praying for Dad and his men, Mom?"
I asked her.
"No, son. I'm praying for the repose
of the souls of the Cuban pilots they're going to kill."
Later I would ask my father what his
squadron's mission was during the Missile Crisis.
"To clear the air of MIGS over Cuba,"
he said.
"You think you could've done it?"
The Great Santini answered, "There wouldn't
have been a bluebird flying over that island, son."
Now let us turn to the literary of The
Great Santini.
Some of you may have heard that I had
some serious reservations about my father's child-rearing practices. When
The Great Santini came out, the book roared through my family like a nuclear
device. My father hated it; my grandparents hated it; my aunts and uncles
hated it; my cousins who adore my father thought I was a psychopath for
writing it; and rumor has it that my mother gave it to the judge in her
divorce case and said, "It's all there. Everything you need to know."
What changed my father's mind was when
Hollywood entered the picture and wanted to make a movie of it. This is
when my father said, "What a shame John Wayne is dead. Now there was a
man. Only he could've gotten my incredible virility across to the American
people."
Orion Pictures did me a favor and sent
my father a telegram; "Dear Col. Conroy: We have selected the actor to
play you in the coming film. He wants to come to Atlanta to interview you.
His name is Truman Capote."
But my father took well to Hollywood
and its Byzantine, unspeakable ways. When his movie came out, he began
reading Variety on a daily basis. He called the movie a classic the first
month of its existence. He claimed that he had a place in the history of
film. In February of the following year, he burst into my apartment in
Atlanta, as excited as I have ever seen him, and screamed, "Son, you and
I were nominated for Academy Awards last night. Your mother didn't get
squat".
Ladies and gentlemen-You are attending
the funeral of the most famous Marine that ever lived. Dad's life had grandeur,
majesty and sweep. We were all caught in the middle of living lives much
paler and less daring than The Great Santini's. His was a high stepping,
damn-the torpedoes kind of life, and the stick was always set at high throttle.
There is not another Marine alive who has not heard of The Great Santini.
There's not a fighter pilot alive who does not lift his glass whenever
Don Conroy's name is mentioned and give the fighter pilot toast: "Hurrah
for the next man to die".
One day last summer, my father asked
me to drive him over to Beaufort National Cemetery. He wanted to make sure
there were no administrative foul-ups about his plot. I could think of
more pleasurable ways to spend the afternoon, but Dad brought new eloquence
to the word stubborn. We went into the office and a pretty black woman
said that everything was squared away.
My father said, "It'll be the second
time I've been buried in this cemetery." The woman and I both looked strangely
at Dad. Then he explained, "You ever catch the flick "The Great Santini?
That was me they planted at the end of the movie."
All of you will be part of a very special
event today. You will be witnessing the actual burial that has already
been filmed in fictional setting. This has never happened in world history.
You will be present in a scene that was acted out in film in 1979. You
will be in the same town and the same cemetery. Only The Great Santini
himself will be different.
In his last weeks my father told me,
"I was always your best subject, son. Your career took a nose dive after
The Great Santini came out". He had become so media savvy that during his
last illness he told me not to schedule his funeral on the same day as
the Seinfeld Farewell. The Colonel thought it would hold down the crowd.
The Colonel's death was front-page news across the country. CNN announced
his passing on the evening news all around the world.
Don Conroy was a simple man and an American
hero. His wit was remarkable; his intelligence frightening; and his sophistication
next to none. He was a man's man and I would bet he hadn't spend a thousand
dollars in his whole life on his wardrobe. He lived out his whole retirement
in a two-room efficiency in the Darlington Apartment in Atlanta. He claimed
he never spent over a dollar on any piece of furniture he owned. You would
believe him if you saw the furniture. Dad bought a season ticket for himself
to Six Flags Over Georgia and would often go there alone to enjoy the rides
and hear the children squeal with pleasure. He was a beer drinker who thought
wine was for Frenchmen or effete social climbers like his children.
Ah! His children. Here is how God gets
a Marine Corps fighter pilot. He sends him seven squirrelly, mealy-mouth
children who march in peace demonstrations, wear Birkenstocks, flirt with
vegetarianism, invite cross-dressers to dinner and vote for candidates
that Dad would line up and shoot. If my father knew how many tears his
children had shed since his death, he would be mortally ashamed of us all
and begin yelling that he should've been tougher on us all, knocked us
into better shape - that he certainly didn't mean to raise a passel of
kids so weak and tacky they would cry at his death. Don Conroy was the
best uncle I ever saw, the best brother, the best grandfather, the best
friend-and my God, what a father. After my mother divorced him and The
Great Santini was published, Don Conroy had the best second act I ever
saw. He never was simply a father. This was The Great Santini.
It is time to leave you, Dad. From Carol
and Mike and Kathy and Jim and Tim and especially from Tom. Your kids wanted
to especially thank Katy and Bobby and Willie Harvey who cared for you
heroically. Let us leave you and say goodbye, Dad, with the passwords that
bind all Marines and their wives and their children forever. The Corps
was always the most important thing.
Semper Fi, Dad
Semper Fi, O Great Santini. |