Funeral Held for Author Harper Lee

Close family and friends of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, who died on Friday aged 89, gathered for a church service in Monroeville.

Brynn Anderson/AP Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” has become one of the best-selling and most remembered American novels. It was a 2006 speech he gave, entitled, “Atticus inside ourselves”.

“For ‘Go Set a Watchman”, there was no one you were cheering for”, he said.

For many years, Lee, a shy woman with an engaging Southern drawl who never married, lived quietly and privately, always turning down interview requests.

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.

Lee was largely unseen in her hometown in recent years, as she first sought privacy and then was secluded at an assisted living home.

Asked what he’d miss most about Lee, Brock said, “Her warmth and her sincerity”.

Gregory Peck portrayed the Alabama lawyer in the 1962 movie version of the novel.

“You wish somebody like that could go on forever and be this lifelong legend”, he said. Her passing was unexpected. The town even served as the inspiration behind the fictional Maycomb County, where much of the novel takes place.

On Friday, many of Harper’s friends and historians came together to celebrate the life of the late author.

“This is beyond the borders of Monroe County and Monroeville itself”, Anton said of Lee’s death.

Lee, known here as Nelle, was a Methodist, and Alice Lee held a number of prominent positions with the church and was also its lawyer. Bush said during a statement that he and his wife, Laura Bush, a former librarian, mourned Lee. “Harper Lee was ahead of her time and her masterpiece “To Kill a Mockingbird” prodded America to catch up with her”, he said.

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.

“I want you to say exactly that”, Flynt quoted Lee as saying at the time. “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience”. Like Scout, Lee grew up a tomboy.

Lee attended law school at the University of Alabama but dropped out before graduating to move to NY and to become a writer.

But it is Atticus who shocks her and To Kill a Mockingbird fans. It’s sold 40 million copies to date and is based on Lee’s life growing up in small town Alabama. At first, she dutifully promoted her work. He also said Lee’s contribution to Capote’s In Cold Blood was greater than believed. “They made my stay here in Monroeville much better than it would have been”.

“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books”, she wrote.