Thoughts from Dr. Joe: A nun’s suggestion leads to ‘Mockingbird’

I blame Sister Mary Delores for turning me into a consummate reader. In 1960, Sister mandated we read 15 books during the summer prior to entering the eighth grade.

Unfortunately, I didn’t make my quota. I read “only” 14 books; consequently, I threw myself at her mercy. I should have known better, Delores was a brick wall. There was no mercy in Sister Mary Delores. Fourteen books were not acceptable. It had to be 15 or transfer to P.S. 87.

School had already begun. Since the Yankees were in the World Series, and since I was an indentured servant in Puglia’s Delicatessen, I had little time for reading. I couldn’t think of another book I wanted to read. Sister smiled and then floated toward the bookshelf in the classroom. (Nuns don’t walk; they float.)

“Read this,” she said. “It was just published.”

I thought the title of the book by Harper Lee was odd: “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I don’t have the words to explain the serendipity of that happenstance. Fifty-five years hence, I wonder if Delores engineered some diabolical plot that would expose me to the magic of story.

I’ve been asked thousands of times what my favorite book is. I don’t have one favorite. Over the years I keep adding favorites to “Mockingbird.” Perhaps my favorite is the book that speaks to me at a particular stage in life. Life has changed a million times; consequently, I have other favorites that give me what I need, when I need it.

I’ve prepared an annotated bibliography of favorites for my students; Harper Lee’s, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is on that list. I am anxious to read, “Go Set a Watchman,” Lee’s mysterious manuscript that has La Cañada book clubs reeling. Its biblical implications from the book of Isaiah 21:6 is intriguing.

In 1960, I was raised on the moral fabric of Atticus Finch, the novel’s protagonist and the widowed Southern lawyer who brought to light racial injustice in an Alabama town during the Great Depression. However, I fell in love with Scout, Atticus’ daughter. The purity and naivete of a little girl is the conduit between the adult world’s perception of the juxtaposition of morality and the Southern status quo. Scout’s father has served as a moral hero, a model of integrity, and the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism. At Michigan State School of Law, a publication “Beyond Atticus Finch: Lessons on Ethics and Morality,” by Renee Knake is a benchmark for aspiring attorneys.

I lived in an Italian and Irish enclave in the Bronx; subsequently, other than what I learned in American history, I had little understanding of African Americans. The community where I’m from relates to the words of Atticus: “Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up…”

In my neighborhood, it wasn’t white supremacy or racial hatred that caused apprehension during the 1960s. Instead, it was judgment based upon what was outside of our understanding.

I never quite met another teacher like Sister Mary Delores. She taught English as though we were dissecting human nature and its subsequent social structures. Our test book was “To Kill a Mockingbird.” We learned that justice was omnipotent. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” (Atticus). “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience,” (Atticus). “I think there’s just one kind of folks, folks,” (Scout). Sister also defined the essence of having moral courage.

During the fall of 1960 the Yankees lost the series to the Pirates, but Sister taught me the most important of lessons. It is the gravest of sins to kill a mockingbird.

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JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.