On Father’s Day, the one father that many of us wanted and never had has been in the news for almost two weeks.

On June 3, the American Film Institute ranked Atticus Finch as the number one hero of American film, beating out the likes of Indiana Jones (2nd), Clarice Starling (6th) and Mahatma Gandhi (21st). Last Thursday, Gregory Peck, the actor who played Atticus, died at the age of 87.

Atticus Finch is the widowed small-town lawyer who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus stays so much with film-goers because of Peck’s incredible portrayal in a wonderful film. Atticus came from the mind of Harper Lee who wrote the novel. But he came from before that too: Atticus was based very closely on her Dad.

Amasa Coleman Lee came to Alabama from Florida in 1913. He married Frances Cunningham Finch and had four children. He was an attorney and newspaper editor, well-loved and respected in Monroeville, Alabama, just as Atticus was in the fictional Maycomb. Photos show A.C. Lee as a tall man, dressed much as Atticus dressed. Like Atticus, he served in the state legislature.

Harper Lee’s mother, dead before the novel begins, actually died in 1951, as did her brother Edwin, thought to be the model for Jem. Her oldest sister Alice was probably also part of the model for Jem — Alice did become a lawyer.

When the novel was published in the summer of 1960, A.C. Lee signed copies as “Atticus Finch.” The rights to adapt the book into a film were quickly bought up.

In January of 1962, Gregory Peck and his wife visited Harper Lee and her family in Monroeville, Alabama. The local paper, The Monroeville Journal, reported that Lee and Peck walked around town and visited the courthouse (which was replicated exactly for the film). They ate in a local diner. Lee died a few months later, on Palm Sunday.

Harper Lee was on set in Hollywood the first day of filming of the screen adaptation of Mockingbird. When Peck walked out dressed as Atticus, she cried. She felt he looked perfect.

Peck went on to win the Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus and when he went up to accept the award he carried A.C. Lee’s watch, a gift from Harper Lee.

Legal scholars have been looking at Atticus Finch and he has not remained perfect. He had two ethical lapses: betraying Mrs. Dubose’s client confidence when he tells the children about her morphine addiction; and going along with Sheriff Tate’s lie about Bob Ewell falling on his own knife, in order to save Boo Radley from being charged with murder.

Monroe Freedman of Hofstra Law School has suggested that Atticus Finch was not the perfect white hero defending a black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of rape, but that he was a racist and sexist man, complicit in the racism that brought Tom Robinson totrial and dismissive of women. As Freedman notes, Atticus encouraged his son Jem to become a lawyer, but did not encourage his daughter, Scout. Other lawyers have argued back.

But those are grown up arguments. I fell in love with Atticus because he was the perfect father and I did not have a perfect father. Atticus listened to his children. He read to them. He treated them as equals whenever he could. And now, he’s America’s favourite film hero.