Pat Conroy's icy relationship with The Citadel thawed last year when his alma mater awarded him an honorary degree, and now he'll deliver today's commencement address to the cadets.
"It wasn't too long ago when I thought I'd never step foot on that campus again. And there's still some Citadel people that wish I'd never stepped foot there to begin with," Conroy says.
Conroy, whose works include "The Prince of Tides" and "Beach Music," is a 1967 graduate who wrote the scathing "Lords of Discipline," a thinly disguised account of life at the state military college. He has criticized the school's military system and its earlier policy of barring its gates to women.
The recent reconciliation with the college is akin to the one Conroy had with his father, Donald, the hard-nosed Marine he wrote about in "The Great Santini." Donald Conroy died in 1998 of cancer.
"I decided I didn't want to go to the grave at war with my college and with my father," the 55-year-old writer said.
In October, Conroy received an honorary degree as did retired Lt. Col. Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, a 1938 graduate and former assistant commandant who was the subject of Conroy's first book, "The Boo."
His seventh book, "My Losing Season: A Point Guard's Way of Knowledge," is expected to be released later this year. It's about the 1966-67 Citadel basketball team which Conroy served as captain.