The beauty of Beaufort's antebellum mansions, Spanish moss, and stately trees was addictive to the young Conroy and his fiction is still reflective of this response: "[it was] a town I grew to love with passion and without apology for its serenity, for its splendidly languid pace, and for its profound and infinite beauty." After graduation in 1963 from all-white Beaufort High, he journeyed some seventy miles up the King's Highway to Charleston and The Citadel, South Carolina's military college, the obvious choice for the son of a military-minded father and tradition-imbued mother. This institution engendered Conroy's earliest writing as editor of the college's literary magazine and became the subject matter for his earliest book as well as his recently completed novel
Lords of Discipline.
Conroy's first book, The Boo (1970), is, as the author himself admits, "sentimental and unashamedly nostalgic." It is about "The Boo," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, Assistant Commandant of Cadets at The Citadel from 1961 to 1968 and the symbol of the institution itself during this time.
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