Patricia-
I am not trying to maintain str as a static variable. My intention is
to initialize str in the constructor of ClassNesting. Something like
this:
ClassNesting(String something){
//initialize str to something
}
Jim-
I figured that since Nest3() was essentially a part of ClassNesting I
should be able to access str through an instance of ClassNesting. I
cannot instantiate Nest3 anywhere except as ClassNesting's member
data.

What I want to do is initialize str through the constructor of
ClassNesting to the passed parameter. Thanks for your responses. I
hope you can help me solve this! :-)

Let me paste a clearer picture here

class ClassNesting {
    class Nest1{
        class Nest2{
            class Nest3{
                String str;

                String getStr(){
                    return str;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    Nest1.Nest2.Nest3 n3; //I don't really want to do this.

    ClassNesting(String s) {

    }
    static void main(String[] args) {
        ClassNesting cn = new ClassNesting("Sumitra");
        cn.n3.str = "Hello!"; //Able to access str here like so. Again, not
really what I want to do.

    }