If you’ve been to school any time during the last 40 years, you’ve likely read a novel in either history or English class, &8220;To Kill a Mockingbird.&8221;

The novel is many stories on many different levels: The tale of a 6-year-old girls as she tried to keep up with her brother and recover from her mother’s death; the tale of an attorney who puts his belief in equality under the law to work in a courtroom filled with bias and hatred for his black client; a tale of a small town that could have been anywhere in the South prior to the civil rights struggle; and a story about all of us and our growing up with values given us by our parents.

It is because that &8220;To Kill a Mockingbird&8221; was so universal in scope that it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1961 &045; preceding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Its author, Miss Harper Lee

has declined many requests for interviews, saying she said all she had to say in that book.

At 81, Miss Lee recently made a trip to Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush.

It is fitting the Monroeville native should receive such an honor. It was long overdue.

She is one of the heroes that still walks among us. Thank you, Miss Lee, for your work.