By Rob Dewig
For Coastal Senior

Famous teacher-turned-novelist hasn't been back to Daufuskie Island since 1972.

BEAUFORT

The man who launched the Lowcountry's foremost literary career by writing of his teaching experiences on isolated Daufuskie Island has no idea what life is like now out there.

And Pat Conroy likes it that way.

Conroy taught in the island's tiny school in 1968. He wrote about it all in his novel, "The Water is Wide." He delivered a boxful of the books to his former students in 1972, riding the ferry one last time.

And he never looked back. He's never been back.

"I like it the way it is in my mind. It ain't changed for me," Conroy says. "You can't believe how beautiful it was. My favorite fact about Daufuskie Island the year I was there was when the only two cars on the island crashed head-on. The island had the highest accident rate in the country, 100 percent."

Conroy talks easily, and often amusingly, about his short time on the island, about his love for his students, about his former student Sallie Ann Robinson's cookbook, the recent publication of which he calls one of his proudest moments.

But the Daufuskie of today is just a place he doesn't really want to know, even if thousands upon thousands of people reading his book do. His was the first book chosen for the Beaufort County Library System's premier "One County, One Book" reading program.

Beaufort County residents, young and old, read the book over the past few weeks, buying them from participating bookstores or checking them out from the county's libraries. More than 350 were borrowed from the libraries alone, circulation manager Kathy Mitchell said.

The idea of the program, basically, was to pick a local book by a local author and concentrate on it, to watch the movie based on it -- "Conrack," in this case -- and discuss it all at the end.

As part of the program's closing events, Conroy spoke at the University of South Carolina Beaufort's Performing Arts Center last month.

He spoke for about an hour to the 200 or so people packed into the auditorium, where, coincidentally, he stood 40 years ago when he graduated from Beaufort High School. His date for that year's junior/senior prom was county libraries director Julie Zachowski.

Conroy said he didn't know that Zachowski wanted him to talk about "The Water is Wide" until the day before his scheduled speech, when he read about it in the newspaper. He said he tried to find a copy in his personal library, but, embarrassingly, couldn't. He said he still can't believe anyone else liked it. He was 24 when he wrote it.

"What amazes me is I wouldn't listen to a single thing a 24-year-old kid had to say," he said, grinning. "I was 24 when I wrote it and the fact that it's still read, I find that amazing."

He said he was invited once to speak about his book in front of a class at a private academy. The students had studied the book long and hard and knew it forward and backward. They even took a test on it, he said.

After his speech to the students, the teacher gave him the test. He got only a quarter of the answers right.

About his own novel.

"I realized I had not read the book in 31 years," he said. "I did not know when I wrote the book I would become me. I did not know people would read it."

But read it they have, and do. And continue writing Conroy has, and will. He said he's now working a cookbook of his own from his Fripp Island house, and has started taking notes for another novel.

But he has no plans to go back to Daufuskie. That way, it'll never change.