Donald Conroy; Author’s Father

Col. Donald Conroy, the father of best-selling author Pat Conroy and the subject of his son’s novel “The Great Santini,” died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 77.

Conroy, a Marine fighter pilot nicknamed “The Great Santini,” spent 33 years in the service until he retired in 1974.

He gained notoriety as the subject of his son’s book. In the movie version of “The Great Santini,” actor Robert Duvall played the lead role of Bull Meecham.

The author said his father was troubled by Duvall’s portrait of him in “The Great Santini.”

“I grew up hating my father,” Conroy told Associated Press by phone Saturday night. “It was the great surprise of my life, after the book came out, what an extraordinary man had raised me.”