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Alice Lee, sister of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' writer Harper Lee, is mourned by fellow church members and friends

Alice Lee was a key figure in Marja Mills's recent bestseller 'The Mockingbird Next Door.'

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Connie Baggett/Press-Register/AP
Alice Lee (l.) accepts birthday wishes from Monroe County Circuit Judge-elect Dawn Hare (center), along with her sister, Pulitzer-winning author Harper Lee (r.) in Monroeville, Ala.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Alice Lee, the sister of “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee and a key figure in Marja Mills’s recent bestseller “The Mockingbird Next Door,” has died.

Lee worked as her sister’s attorney and was named the oldest lawyer still working in Alabama in 2012 when she was 100. (Lee was 103 at the time of her death.) When she turned 100, Lee finally retired, noted al.com, the website for the Alabama newspapers the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, and the Press-Register of Mobile.

Monroe County Probate Judge Greg Norris told al.com, “She was wonderful, very bright. She had a good sense of humor and she was always willing to teach me. She lived her life where everybody could see her.”

Lee worked at the same firm as had her father, Amasa Coleman Lee. Mr. Lee was often cited as a role model for Atticus Finch, the idealistic attorney and protagonist of "To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee at least once referred to Alice Lee as “Atticus in a skirt,” according to The Washington Post.

Former United Methodist minister Thomas Lane Butts, a Monroeville resident, spoke with NPR about Lee. Lee was very active in her church, the United Methodist Church, which honors women in ministry with an award named after Lee. 

“Whenever there was a question in the community that no one could answer, the saying was, 'Go ask Miss Alice,'" Butts told NPR. "Her death is like the closing of a great library.”

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