A legacy of sharing: 50 years later, 'The Water is Wide', Pat Conroy still has indelible impact

“In fifty years I would be seventy-four, an old curmudgeon with a hairless, toothless head; the geriatric remnant of the forties, whose blood had dried, whose youth had withered, whose dreams had died like the grasses and washed out on a spring tide,” wrote Pat Conroy in his memoir, "The Water is Wide."

While Conroy may have passed away in 2016 at the age of 70, the seventh annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival featured a panel discussion of the 50th anniversary of this landmark memoir with historian Larry Rowland, fellow teachers George Westerfield and Peter Walter, and former student Sallie Ann Robinson.

Recent Literary Festival events: Savannah native Bruce Feiler headlines March Forth event for the late Pat Conroy

Also: Cassandra King Conroy talks about favorite places in Beaufort, South Carolina

Culture Stock: Georgia has all the makings for an art-music-technology hub

Walter quoted Conroy: “The reason kids say ‘I don’t care’ is they have nothing to share. Give them something to share, they start to care, and they want to learn more because it feels so good to share,’” noting that Conroy loved to share his life and experiences with anyone that he met.

When Conroy asked Walter permission to include him in "The Water Is Wide," Walter notes “I knew at that moment that Pat was going to skyrocket to fame.”

Former student Sallie Ann Robinson noted that Conroy would bring anyone to the island to share with the children, as she remembered violinists, singers, scientists. She told a warmly humorous story of a woman with long hair that brought a science project with magnets, a battery and a wire to learn about electricity during a time that Robinson did not have electricity in her home, and on touching the wire the woman’s hair stood on end, much to the amusement of the class.

Notes Robinson, “With Pat, he just showed us a lot of things that we weren’t familiar with - we were learning from books but it didn’t connect. He was all about ‘connect the dots.’”

Mark Murphy: To find myself, I climbed to the mountaintop again, 50 years later

Having been fired after his first year for clashes with the school administration, Conroy’s colleague George Westerfield recalled the passion with which Conroy approached his dismissal, noting “When Pat got angry he burned with anger, and he had the words to express his anger creatively. So creatively that, subsequently, one of the new superintendents announced that one reason he took the job in Beaufort County was that he wanted to read the letters that Pat Conroy had written.”

Perhaps the legacy of "The Water Is Wide" and the impact of Conroy himself can best be summed up by Robinson, who stated “One thing I asked Pat was, when are you gonna do the sequel? And he said ‘No, Sallie Ann - that’s your book.’”

The Pat Conroy Literary Center is located at 601 Bladen Street, Beaufort, S.C., and is open Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: 50 years later, 'The Water is Wide', Pat Conroy still has impact