hand on it.
Chapter Eight
W hen I was in Chicago, we kept in touch by fax. I told Alice and Nelle, for example, about additional newspapers that had run my story. Alice was a regular correspondent, keeping me up to date on how she and Nelle were doing and what was happening in Monroeville. I began to get a deeper appreciation for the way in which meaningful friendships once blossomed via letters. It allows time to reflect, and to reveal oneself gradually.
In July 2003, I made it back to Monroeville. I saw Dale Welch and drove with Tom to see Alice honored in Mobile with the Alabama Bar Association’s second annual Maud McLure Kelly Award. The honor was named for the first female lawyer in the state.
This was the first and only time I saw Alice wear footwear other than her trademark white Reeboks. She had on white flats for the occasion. They complemented her lavender suit. She stepped more gingerly without the traction of the Reeboks.
I glanced around the room and saw lawyers and judges, and Lee friends and family. This was, everyone understood, a day to honor Alice while she was still alive to enjoy the tributes.
“I don’t see Nelle,” I told Tom.
“I noticed that. It’s a long trip by train, though. And I’m guessing she wanted the focus to stay on Alice today. Anytime she’s in a room, she is going to be the star attraction.”
Nelle’s best tribute to Alice was in the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird . All those years ago, she dedicated the novel to her and their father. The simple dedication was “for Mr. Lee and Alice in consideration of Love & Affection.” A. C. Lee, Nelle made it clear from the start, was the inspiration for Atticus Finch. And Alice, in Nelle’s words, was “Atticus in a Skirt.”
Tom took to the podium to introduce Alice, and to recount the legal career being celebrated that day. When it was time to deliver a sermon or give public remarks such as these, he lowered his voice an octave or two and put a little more English on the ball, linguistically speaking. He called this his “stained-glass voice.”
“Let me tell you something about the journey of this unusual woman, who is the uncontested, quiet queen of the courthouse, the Methodist Church, and the community where she lives.”
Both Alice and her father started their law careers later in life, after working in other capacities. A.C. was a bookkeeper for a lumber company before studying law. Alice graduated from high school in 1928 at the age of sixteen and went on to Huntingdon College in Montgomery. When the Depression hit, she returned to Monroeville before graduating. A.C. had purchased the Monroe Journal . She worked there seven years, doing whatever needed to be done, as she put it. She spent the following seven years in Birmingham. She went to work for the Internal Revenue Service in the newly created Social Security administration. From 1939 to 1943 she attended night school at the Birmingham School of Law. The bar exam, in 1943, was an ordeal. She told the audience assembled at this Mobile hotel for the Maud McLure Kellyevent of the four anxious souls taking the exam. Three young men, all 4-Fs, disqualified from service in World War II due to physical problems, and one Alice Finch Lee.
“I don’t recall a single one of us completing a single exam, a factor that caused considerable anxiety as we had no clue as to how it would affect the examination. Four examiners, sixteen exams, and at five P.M. on the afternoon of day four we were finished. It is my private opinion that Lance Armstrong, who is currently looked upon as the epitome of stamina and endurance, is no more fatigued at the conclusion of one of his races than we were at the end of day four.”
She passed.
“Something called the Victory Tax had just become law,” Tom told the crowd. “All income over six hundred dollars became taxable, and people who had never filed a federal tax return had to file. There was no CPA in Monroeville, but it was
Chapter Eight
W hen I was in Chicago, we kept in touch by fax. I told Alice and Nelle, for example, about additional newspapers that had run my story. Alice was a regular correspondent, keeping me up to date on how she and Nelle were doing and what was happening in Monroeville. I began to get a deeper appreciation for the way in which meaningful friendships once blossomed via letters. It allows time to reflect, and to reveal oneself gradually.
In July 2003, I made it back to Monroeville. I saw Dale Welch and drove with Tom to see Alice honored in Mobile with the Alabama Bar Association’s second annual Maud McLure Kelly Award. The honor was named for the first female lawyer in the state.
This was the first and only time I saw Alice wear footwear other than her trademark white Reeboks. She had on white flats for the occasion. They complemented her lavender suit. She stepped more gingerly without the traction of the Reeboks.
I glanced around the room and saw lawyers and judges, and Lee friends and family. This was, everyone understood, a day to honor Alice while she was still alive to enjoy the tributes.
“I don’t see Nelle,” I told Tom.
“I noticed that. It’s a long trip by train, though. And I’m guessing she wanted the focus to stay on Alice today. Anytime she’s in a room, she is going to be the star attraction.”
Nelle’s best tribute to Alice was in the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird . All those years ago, she dedicated the novel to her and their father. The simple dedication was “for Mr. Lee and Alice in consideration of Love & Affection.” A. C. Lee, Nelle made it clear from the start, was the inspiration for Atticus Finch. And Alice, in Nelle’s words, was “Atticus in a Skirt.”
Tom took to the podium to introduce Alice, and to recount the legal career being celebrated that day. When it was time to deliver a sermon or give public remarks such as these, he lowered his voice an octave or two and put a little more English on the ball, linguistically speaking. He called this his “stained-glass voice.”
“Let me tell you something about the journey of this unusual woman, who is the uncontested, quiet queen of the courthouse, the Methodist Church, and the community where she lives.”
Both Alice and her father started their law careers later in life, after working in other capacities. A.C. was a bookkeeper for a lumber company before studying law. Alice graduated from high school in 1928 at the age of sixteen and went on to Huntingdon College in Montgomery. When the Depression hit, she returned to Monroeville before graduating. A.C. had purchased the Monroe Journal . She worked there seven years, doing whatever needed to be done, as she put it. She spent the following seven years in Birmingham. She went to work for the Internal Revenue Service in the newly created Social Security administration. From 1939 to 1943 she attended night school at the Birmingham School of Law. The bar exam, in 1943, was an ordeal. She told the audience assembled at this Mobile hotel for the Maud McLure Kellyevent of the four anxious souls taking the exam. Three young men, all 4-Fs, disqualified from service in World War II due to physical problems, and one Alice Finch Lee.
“I don’t recall a single one of us completing a single exam, a factor that caused considerable anxiety as we had no clue as to how it would affect the examination. Four examiners, sixteen exams, and at five P.M. on the afternoon of day four we were finished. It is my private opinion that Lance Armstrong, who is currently looked upon as the epitome of stamina and endurance, is no more fatigued at the conclusion of one of his races than we were at the end of day four.”
She passed.
“Something called the Victory Tax had just become law,” Tom told the crowd. “All income over six hundred dollars became taxable, and people who had never filed a federal tax return had to file. There was no CPA in Monroeville, but it was
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