Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship

Written by Bernie Schein

Narrated by Brian Troxell

For Pat Conroy fans, a loving, laughter-filled homage to a loyal, big-hearted friend.

Pat Conroy, the bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini among many other books, was beloved by millions of readers. Bernie Schein was his best friend from the time they met in a high-school pickup basketball game in Beaufort, South Carolina, until Conroy’s death in 2016. Both were popular athletes but also outsiders as a Jew and a Catholic military brat in the small-town Bible-Belt South, and they bonded. Wise ass and smart aleck, loudmouths both, they shared an ebullient sense of humor and romanticism, were mesmerized by the highbrow and reveled in the low, and would sacrifice entire evenings and afternoons to endless conversation. As young teachers in the Beaufort area and later in Atlanta, they were activists in the civil rights struggle and against institutional racism and bigotry. Bernie knew intimately the private family story of the Conroys and his friend’s difficult relationship with his Marine Corps colonel father that Pat would draw on repeatedly in his fiction.

A love letter and homage, and a way to share the Pat he knew, this book collects Bernie’s cherished memories about the gregarious, welcoming, larger-than-life man who remained his best friend, even during the years they didn’t speak. It offers a trove of insights and anecdotes that will be treasured by Pat Conroy’s many devoted fans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781721385706

Bernie Schein

Bernie Schein was born, bred, and Bar Mitzvahed in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was an educator for forty-five years, for many of them in Atlanta. He is the author of three books, including If Holden Caulfield Were in My Classroom and the novel Famous All over Town. He has been published and featured in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, the Jewish Advocate, Atlanta magazine, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and interviewed on NPR and radio stations across the country. He is now an educational consultant as well as a humorist and raconteur. He and his wife live in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Reviews for Pat Conroy

[dandiercks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful, funny, insightful memoir of one friend by another. People don’t normally think of two men being this close, but Bernie and Pat were as colse as spouses can be. In fact, at the end of the book, Bernie said that it was amazing that they weren’t gay because their love for one another was as deep as the love any two committed partners feel. I’ve read just about everything Pat Conroy has written, so I acame to this book looking for more insight into the complext person that was Pat Conroy, and I got just that. Everyone should have a friend as wonderful as Bernie Schein.

[formerenglishteacher · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful, funny, insightful memoir of one friend by another. People don’t normally think of two men being this close, but Bernie and Pat were as colse as spouses can be. In fact, at the end of the book, Bernie said that it was amazing that they weren’t gay because their love for one another was as deep as the love any two committed partners feel. I’ve read just about everything Pat Conroy has written, so I acame to this book looking for more insight into the complext person that was Pat Conroy, and I got just that. Everyone should have a friend as wonderful as Bernie Schein.

[samsattler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When it came to exposing his personal life in print, Pat Conroy seems to have had little fear despite knowing that numerous members of his family were not going to appreciate his decision to air the family’s dirty laundry in so public a manner. Conroy was so frank about himself and his upbringing that longtime readers of his work easily could see that the man was still carrying emotional baggage from his childhood, but few outsiders could know just how heavy that burden was. Now, Bernie Schein, Pat’s lifetime best friend despite a fifteen-year interruption to their friendship, takes up where Pat left off. Many Pat Conroy fans came to consider him a personal friend over the decades they read him, so for obvious reasons Schein’s Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship is not an easy book to read – it just hurts too much to watch a friend suffer the way Pat suffered. It is, however, a book that Pat Conroy fans owe it to themselves (and to Pat) to read.Bernie Schein was a senior in Beaufort High School (South Carolina) when military brat Pat Conroy entered the school as a junior. It was soon obvious that Conroy was going to be a star athlete despite the resentment of the school’s seniors who would have preferred that he fail. What was not immediately so obvious is that he was also going to become a huge social star among the school’s freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. And after Bernie invited Pat to the very first school party of any type he would ever attend, the two became friends for the rest of their lives.Their friendship started in a 1961 Beaufort High School study hall, and it would not end until the two men said their goodbyes at Pat’s deathbed on March 4, 2016. Along the way, Pat, Bernie, and the rest of their crew managed to avoid the Viet Nam War while Pat and Bernie prepared for careers as school teachers and writers. The two shared a sense of humor that usually saw them trading one verbal putdown after another any time they were together. Each gave as well as he got, but largely due to his alcoholism and the damage that Santini did to his soul, Pat’s vulnerabilities and insecurities were sometimes expressed in bursts of sudden anger and an uncanny ability to hold a grudge for reasons that were often only imagined. Yes, this is a book for Pat Conroy fans, but as one of those fans, I have to warn you that you will come away from it a little saddened by some of the things you learn about Pat’s interactions with those closest to him. For that reason, this is not always an easy book to read. But Pat, especially near the end of his life, expressed a desire to be as honest with his fans as he could possibly be. He was willing to talk about anything and everything, and Bernie Schein makes sure here that Pat gets his wish. Pat would have approved.More than anything in the world, Pat Conroy wanted to be the hero in his world, and he worked hard to play that role – often to his own detriment. Little did he realize how big a hero he always was to his readers.