Editing The Great Santini (section)

==Plot==
A warrior without a war, Lt. Col. Wilbur "Bull" Meechum, a pilot known as "the Great Santini" to his fellow [[United States Marine Corps|Marines]], sets off with his reluctant family at 3 a.m., moving to the military base town of [[Beaufort, South Carolina]], in peacetime 1962. His wife, Lillian, is loyal and docile, tolerant of Meechum's temper and drinking. Their teenage children, Ben and Mary Anne, are accustomed to his stern discipline and behave accordingly while adapting to their new town and school.

Ben's talent at basketball earned him a spot on the school team, and he became a dominant player on the court. During one-on-one games with Meechum at home, though, his father refuses to let Ben win, using unnecessarily rough physical tactics and humiliating insults and criticizing the rest of the family when they try to interfere. When Ben finally wins a game, Meechum unleashes a torrent of verbal abuse while bouncing the ball off his head. Later that night, Ben finds his father practising basketball alone in the driveway in the pouring rain. Lillian urges Ben not to be angry at his father and explains that Meechum is showing Ben that he will have to work to compete with his son now. During a school game, Meechum orders Ben to strike back against a rival player who has committed a foul. Ben tackles the player and breaks his arm, getting himself ejected from the game and dismissed from the team.

Ben is befriended by the young black man, Toomer Smalls, whose mother Arrabelle is the family housekeeper. After Toomer uses his beehives to defend himself from a group of racists who come to attack him at home, he is shot. Ben defies his father's orders to wait for more help and follows Arrabelle's pleas to go out and help Toomer but he dies by the time Meechum confronts them on the road. Ben stands his ground, and Meechum backs down. His CO later tells Meechum he should be proud of his son, because helping Toomer showed the moral courage that Marines strive for.

After seeing Ben and Mary Anne off to the prom together, and insisting on splurging on "the best" dress, Meechum goes out on a routine mission. His engines fail, and he chooses to crash his plane into the sea rather than eject and let the aircraft crash into the nearby town. The family leaves Beaufort after his funeral at 3 a. m. just as they had before, with Ben at the wheel.