Not even the wild animals could ignore Conroy. His childhood home was a refuge for them — orphaned raccoons and injured birds of prey, even a renegade squirrel monkey who, as often as not, was found running about the house.

Conroy’s mother, Dode, cared for five baby foxes while her son was attending Furman University in South Carolina.

"Now, don’t spoil them," he told her before marching off to class.

In a family where normalcy was defined by reading bedtime stories to four children and their pet fawn, a passion for nature was soon kindled in the young Conroy — if not in everyone else.

Summering at the family farm, a college-age Conroy had one of his ideas thwarted.

"This year, let’s everyone become an expert at something," he urged his parents and three sisters. They could study mushrooms, plants, anything, he said, as long as they became experts.

But no one ever did, recalled his mother, of Asheville, N.C., because when he was around they just pointed and asked, "What’s that?"

Today Conroy still shares his expertise, although now with an extended family of 112,000 Calhoun County residents and more than one kingdom of life.

— Matthew Korade, Star Senior Writer