The Lee sisters — Alice, Nelle and Louise — were like shooting stars that fell on Alabama during the second half of the 20th century.

The death of Alice, the oldest of the three, a few weeks ago brought the bright glow of the sisters back into mind.

The light dimmed and then went out on Alice, the oldest — “worn out from age,” a friend said — at 103.

Alice was the first of four children born to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Two of the sisters, and a brother, had strong ties to Auburn University.

Three of the four were writers. Alice and sister Louise Connor of Eufaula were former journalists and Nelle a novelist.

Alice was also a ground-breaker. She was the first female president of the Alabama Bar Association, and she practiced law until she was 100 years old at the law firm founded by her father, who was also her role model.

Alice’s most famous client and house mate for half a century was her very private sister, Nelle Harper Lee, who wrote one of the great books of our time,“To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Before she took up the law, Alice was editor of the weekly newspaper, The Monroeville Journal, owned by her father, for almost a decade.

The third sister, Louise, who passed on about six years ago, was also a respected journalist whose writings appeared in many Alabama and Georgia daily newspapers. She kept everyone informed about her neck of the woods.

Louise and her brother, Edwin Coleman Lee, who died of heart failure at the early age of 31, were graduates of Auburn. Edwin studied industrial engineering and Louise liberal arts. Louise was also a Golden Eagle, a member of the Auburn Alumni Association, with more than 50 years of membership and service.

Though Nelle Harper studied law at, but did not graduate from, the university located north of us in a town with an Indian chief’s name, she kept strong ties to Auburn through Dr. Wayne Flynt, her longtime close friend and trusted adviser.

Dr. Flynt, a respected Southern culture historian at Auburn, advised Harper not too long ago in a dispute between the writer and the Monroeville Historical Society. The flare up involved the selling of too much Harper Lee souvenir items in the society’s gift shop inside the old Monroe County Courthouse that now serves as an historical site.

The courthouse provided the location for filming courtroom scenes for the movie version of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” We’re told Dr. Flynt helped negotiate a peaceful end to the dispute.

People get the impression that Harper was a shy, anti-social loner who prefers solitude. But when her health was better, she was often out and about, seen shopping at the local Walmart. She and Alice used to eat fried catfish each Saturday off children’s plates at a local catfish cabin.

In Monroeville, Alice and Harper were regarded as just regular people. And that’s the way they wanted it.

To Harper, writers were workers. The work was the important part, not the writer.

Harper believed that famous writers were not celebrities and so she shunned the spotlight. Most days, she wore khaki slacks, old sneakers and pullover T-shirts – very much like the tomboy Scout, the young girl who narrates her masterful novel.

She kept to herself and to her sisters because she detested the idea of dressing up and strutting around in public. Bling was not her thing. Nor flashing cameras. Writers were ordinary workers, she believed.

Sister Alice was different. She was often called “Atticus in a skirt” for the professional way she carried herself and for her sharp manner of dress. Atticus, you remember, is the lawyer in the novel who was her fictional dad.

Harper is living out her final years in an assisted-living facility in Monroeville. Since suffering a stroke in 2007, she has been confined to a wheelchair, almost blind – from macular degeneration – and deaf.

Hemingway defined courage as “grace under pressure.” That definition fit both Atticus, her fictional father, and Amasa Coleman Lee, her real father.

Anyone can be brave when things go well. The test of character and courage is to remain steady and firm when things go wrong. Atticus easily passed that test.

Harper’s celebrated novel takes place during a dark time in our Southern history, when racism often escalated into lynch-mob violence. The book tells the story of how a civilized, gentle lawyer gained the respect of the Negro community by defending a black man, Tom, wrongfully accused of raping a white woman.

No white lawyer concerned with his future in a small Southern town would have taken the case. But Atticus did.

The novel was first written as a series of short stories. Accepted by a publisher that insisted it be rewritten, Harper spent more than two years turning it into the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that became an immediate best-seller when it was published in 1960.

During that time, she lived alone in a tiny New York apartment that did not have running water. She became a hermit, she wrote. But all the hard work paid off.

In a survey, librarians throughout the country selected it as the best novel of the 20th century. And the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch as the greatest film hero of all time.

Judges often order defendants to read the book as part of their sentences.

There is word that Harper has written a second, unpublished novel. It supposedly tells the story of an Alexander City voodoo preacher who kills his entire family.

Perhaps Dr. Flynt, her adviser, can tell us if the book will ever see the light of print. In the meantime, the 88-year-old “Jane Austin of South Alabama” is still with us. Her light, though dimmed by infirmities, still glows.

Louise Lee Conner