When I was 10 years old, I met a lawyer. He was a country lawyer from a small town in Alabama. I was introduced to him by his daughter. I even got to watch him try a jury case. He lost the trial, but in the process, he won my heart and inspired me to be a lawyer.

His name was Atticus Finch.

I met him at the “picture show,” as we called movies in those days. I sat in the Northgate Theatre in downtown Frayser, Tennessee. and watched Gregory Peck portray Atticus as a role model father and lawyer.

A few years later, I returned to the little town of Maycomb, Alabama, to spend more time with Atticus, his daughter Scout, and his son Jem. This time the visit wasn’t at the “picture show,” but by reading Harper Lee’s wonderful book, To Kill a Mockingbird, after it was assigned to me by my 11th grade high school English teacher,  Mrs. Salyer.

I once again experienced Atticus’s courageous performance in a jury trial. Once again, he lost. And once again, he made me dream of becoming a lawyer.

A few weeks ago, I made by third trip back to Maycomb, Alabama, and spent some more time with Atticus and his now-grown daughter, Scout. The Atticus I encountered on this visit was not the heroic Atticus I first met when I was ten years old. He was an elderly Atticus, and he made a lot of comments that were inconsistent with the statements I heard or read Atticus make in that jury trial in Alabama several decades ago.

My visit with Atticus this time was in the pages of Harper Lee’s new, or rather old, book, Go Set a Watchman. It is the story of a grown-up Scout returning home to Alabama in the 1950s to visit her father, only to discover that in his dotage, he was expressing racist views about the emerging civil rights movement in his native south.

I confess it was painful for me to read Go Set a Watchman. I had looked forward to this sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, which actually turned out to be a prequel or first draft of the book.

As I read Go Set a Watchman, I began to wish that Harper Lee had followed the advice of Elvis: “Never do an encore.” I wished that, like Elvis, Harper Lee had simply left the building. After all, for years whenever she was asked why she had not written another book, she had replied beautifully, “I said what I had to say.”

But I couldn’t resist spending a little more time this past summer with Atticus and Scout. It reminded me of other summer visits I made years ago with my grandfather in the booming metropolis of Bemis, Tennessee, and it also reminded me of the last few years of my father’s life. And just as in the case of my grandfather and father, no matter what the elderly Atticus said, he remains my hero.

It appears that like so many of us, Atticus was a bundle of contradictions, and he was influenced by his culture and his times.

Even the Atticus of To Kill a Mockingbird was not a civil rights activist. He was a country lawyer who in the years leading up to the Depression served in the Alabama legislature. It would be a work of monumental fiction that Atticus was a liberal in the modern sense of the word.

No, Atticus was a country lawyer who courageously represented an innocent black man, Tom Robinson. He bravely stood up to both a lynch mob and a racist jury.

He taught Scout and his son, Jem, that courage is “when you know you’ve been licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Atticus also wisely taught his children, “Sometimes a Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of another. … There are just some kind of men who are so busy worrying about the next world, they never learn to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the result.”

And of course, Atticus famously told Scout and Jem, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Like a mockingbird, Atticus sang. He sang for his children, he sang for justice in the courtroom, and he sang for me.

He may have hit some bad notes late in his life as reflected in Go Set a Watchman, but it would be a sin to judge him for a few things he said in the sunset of his life.

I intend to judge Atticus the way I hope I’ll be judged when the roll is called up yonder and hopefully I’ll be there. I want to be remembered for my best days, not my bad ones. I want to be remembered for love and grace, not hate and judgment.

And so that’s the way I’m going to remember Atticus, now that I have said goodbye to him after my last visit.

Atticus is and will always be my hero.
 

BILL HALTOM is a shareholder with the firm of Lewis Thomason. He is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association and a past president of the Memphis Bar Association. Read his blog at www.billhaltom.com.