Monroeville mourns demise of beloved resident, Harper Lee

It had appeared that Lee’s sole literary output would be “To Kill a Mockingbird”, especially since she acknowledged she could not top the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Lee’s longtime friend, history professor Wayne Flynt, eulogized her in a ceremony at First United Methodist Church.

Tributes to Lee’s novel dot the town.

Lee’s 1960 book To Kill a Mockingbird is about racism and injustice in the U.S. South and is a classic of American literature.

It is said to have been loosely based on the observations of Lee and an event which happened in her hometown when she was a young girl. She was long considered as only a one-book wonder with only “To Kill a Mockingbird” under her name.

The country is mourning the loss of one of the most influential authors of our time.

Flynt said Lee liked the speech so much that she wanted him to give it as her eulogy.

Brynn Anderson/AP Monroeville, Ala., residents say that the town will forever be linked to late author Harper Lee.

Gregory Peck stared in the enormously successful film version, as the white attorney defending a black man falsely accused of rape.

“I think to kill a mockingbird will be read for ever and ever”, Theroux said.

She was then laid to rest at her family burial plot, alongside her father and sister, Alice Lee.

“You would see her around but still we would honor her wishes of being a very private person”.

Lee’s state of mind would become an issue a year ago when plans were announced to publish “Go Set a Watchman“.

In November 2007, Lee was invited to the White House to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, who, at the time, called her book “a gift to the entire world”.

After suffering a stroke and enduring failing vision and hearing, she spent her final years in an assisted living residence in Monroeville.

“Harper Lee has left us a great gift: a beloved vision of our better selves in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and a thornier reflection of what lies beneath in her earlier manuscript, ‘Go Set a Watchman, ‘” wrote Wilkerson, best known for “The Warmth of Other Suns”, which traced black migration from the South in the 20th century.

“That story, I’m glad it’s in just about all the schools now because it’s a story that everybody needs to hear”, he said. Flynt said Lee was “savagely witty”. “I believe she wasn’t strong enough at the end of her life to make any informed decisions about her work”, he said.

Lee’s sister said the authors eventually fell out because Capote was jealous of Lee’s Pulitzer, which she won in 1961. “You have to start the conversation about race somewhere, and Harper Lee is a great place to start it”.