The Regina Public Library finds people of all ages continue to be impacted by the writing of Harper Lee.
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Much like most of her life, the funeral was a very private event.
A few dozen loved ones gathered at a Monroeville church to bid farewell to the 89-year-old author of the American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
“Watchman” was written before “Mockingbird” but was set 20 years later, using the same location and numerous same characters.
Anton said reading the book – in which attorney Atticus Finch defends a wrongly accused African-American man – was one of the reasons he chose to become a lawyer.
“For ‘Go Set a Watchman”, there was no one you were cheering for”, he said.
The courthouse was where Lee as a child, like her creation Scout Finch, would peer down from the balcony as her father tried his cases in the courtroom.
After suffering a stroke and enduring failing vision and hearing, she spent her final years in an assisted living residence in Monroeville.
Actor Josh Gad tweeted that “To Kill a Mockingbird” was the first book he remembers reading cover-to-cover.
Asked what he’d miss most about Lee, Brock said, “Her warmth and her sincerity”.
It was also made into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck.
A lawyer named Atticus Finch defends Robinson in court.
The Southern town was home to childhood friends Truman Capote and Lee, giving rise to its self-given nickname of the literary capital of the South. Ann Mote, owner of the Ol’ Curiosities & Book Shoppe in Monroeville, said she thinks the town will always be linked to Lee.
“You wish somebody like that could go on forever and be this lifelong legend”, he said. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view”, he tells her gently, “…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” is one of only two novels Lee wrote.
Flynt said Lee liked the speech so much that she wanted him to give it as her eulogy.
Despite her private nature, Lee regularly attended an annual luncheon at the University of Alabama to meet the winners of a high school essay contest on the subject of her book.
Bush said in a statement on Friday that he and his wife, Laura Bush, a former librarian, mourned Lee.
Lee’s 1960 book To Kill a Mockingbird about racism and injustice in the U.S. South is a classic of American literature. He said President Barack Obama had great respect for her.
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“Her novel, over time, ceased to be a novel about race in America and became a novel about tolerance from people different from ourselves”, says Wayne Flynt, another close friend. The present isn’t comfortable any more, and Atticus’s beloved line – “Gentlemen if there’s one slogan in this world I believe, it is this: equal rights for all, special privileges for none” – a thing of the past.
