Arlynn and John

In her eighty-four years, Arlynn Swope endured many of life’s greatest challenges. She knew illness, poverty, a near-death pregnancy, mental illness in her immediate family, and the suicide of her husband. She lived through the Great Depression and dropped out of school in the ninth grade to help her family survive the 1930s. But through it all, she faced each of the many rocks in her road with love and grit. Hers is an uncommon tale from a most common Hoosier woman, “the little woman” who was never little but was always there for those she loved. A veteran of the US Navy with an eleventh-grade education, John Curtis Knight didn’t know what he was in for when he fell crazy in love with Arlynn. A welder and factory worker by trade, he built a reputation as a top amateur golfer who became a real “player” on his native Indiana courses. His life was built around Arlynn and their family, and they shared a rich adventure together-until despair and paranoia led to his suicide when he was seventy-eight.