Sunday, July 12, 2015

Harper Lee: my little sister

They were 15 years apart, but shared a passion for home and family. Alice Finch Lee on the growing 

Harper Lee with her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, in 1961
Harper Lee with her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, in 1961. Photograph: Donald Uhrbrock/Life/Getty Images
My father was a self-made person. Back in those days, they didn’t have much rural education. He probably went to a school less than a year, all told. But he was one of the best-educated men you ever knew.

By 16 he had educated himself, and he took the exams and taught school at 16. His family were all farmers, and he was determined not to be one. He became a bookkeeper for sawmill companies, and moved around. He came to Monroe County, worked for a sawmill company in Finchburg and that’s where he met my mother. They were married in 1910 and lived in Florida, where I was born. I am the only alien in the family, the only one not born in Alabama.
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