By: Emily Eveland
On the morning of June 26, 1926, John Allyn Smith Sr. allegedly shot himself dead outside his 11-year-old son’s bedroom window. John Allyn Smith Jr., later renamed John Berryman, would spend the rest of his life trying to make sense of his father’s death, plagued by the question: How could God do this?
Attempting to reconcile with the loss of his father, Berryman turned to sex, alcohol and literature.