MONROEVILLE, Ala. – The author of the America classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” was laid to rest Saturday in a private ceremony attended by only the closest of friends and family, a reflection of how she had lived.
Harper Lee, who died Friday at age 89, was eulogized at a church in the small Alabama town of Monroeville, which the author used as a model for the imaginary town of Maycomb, the setting of Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
A few dozen people who comprised Lee’s intimate circle gathered at the First United Methodist Church to hear a eulogy Saturday by her longtime friend and history professor, Wayne Flynt. Afterward, her casket was taken by silver hearse to an adjacent cemetery where her father, A.C. Lee and sister, Alice Lee, are buried.
The town was appropriately somber a day after their native daughter’s death.
Ann Mote, owner of the Ol’ Curiosities & Book Shoppe in Monroeville, said she thinks the town will always be linked to Lee.
Jared Anton of Hollywood, Florida, said reading the book – in which attorney Atticus Finch defends a wrongly accused African-American man – was one reason he decided to became a lawyer.
“It is the greatest American novel.” he said
Mockingbirds chirped and frolicked among blooming camellia bushes outside the courthouse on a warm Alabama morning that teased the early arrival of spring.
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. 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.
“She’s a part of it and always will be,” said Mote.
Tributes to Lee’s novel dot the town. The courthouse is a museum that pays homage to her creation. There’s the Mockingbird Inn on the edge of town and a statute of children reading, “Mockingbird” in the courthouse square.
Tickets for the city’s annual “Mockingbird” play go on sale in a week for the city’s annual “To Kill A Mockingbird” play, Mote said. A black mourning bow donned the top of the sign at the bookstore, where a stack of hardcopy “Mockingbird” books sat the counter along with a DVD of the movie.
The town this summer had a celebration for the release of “Go Set a Watchman” – Lee’s initial draft of the story that would become “Mockingbird” – even though many residents had ambivalent feelings about its release.
Lee, for years was largely unseen in her hometown, as she first sought privacy and then was secluded at an assisted living home. Security guards would shoo away the inevitable mix of reporters, curious onlookers and old acquaintances who were not on her list of approved visitors.
“You would see her around but still we would honor her wishes of being a very private person. The impact from now forward I think for the next few weeks we’ll have an influx of people in here just looking around and at some point – like when anybody passes away – at some point it just returns back to normal,” said Tim McKenzie, chairman of the museum’s board of directors who also acts in the play.
McKenzie said the best way fans can honor the author’s memory is by applying the values in Mockingbird to the way they treat others.
“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. “If you adhere to the values she put in that book, if everybody did, we’d be living in a much better world.”
