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May 18, 1927 started out as a sunny day in Bath, Michigan. The local consolidated school was filled with restless children taking exams on their final day of school. It was to become a day that is still infamous for the residents of this small community north of Lansing.
Andrew Kehoe, 55, a local farmer and treasurer of the school board, had been an active opponent to the increased taxes that were levied to pay for the school. He was facing foreclosure on his farm from a relative in Lansing. His neighbors described him as intelligent, but pugnacious. He was also determined to have “revenge” for his financial troubles. He did this by placing 1,000 pounds of explosives under the newly built school.
Kehoe returned to his home where he murdered his wife and all of the horses on the farm and blew up his house.
At 9:45 that morning, Kehoe detonated 500 pounds of those explosives, killing 38 children and three teachers. There were an additional 58 people injured. Most of the children killed were between the ages of four and eight.
Superintendent Emery Huyck spotted Kehoe in his truck and ran over to him—whether it was to “confront” him as some reports claim or to enlist his help, we’ll probably never know. Witnesses did see a struggle, which ended when Kehoe turned and fired a rifle into the back of his pickup truck—detonating the additional explosives he had in the back, killing himself, Huyck, and three more children—including an 8-year-old who had escaped the original blast.
The only good fortune of the day was that the other 500 pounds of explosives Kehoe had placed never went off.
The Bath community has memorialized the victims and survivors of this tragedy in many ways. There is a national historical marker on the site where the school once stood. The cupola of the old school, which survived the bombing, stands in a memorial park. In the new middle school, there is a museum in the lobby of the James Couzens Memorial Auditorium. It’s a small museum—merely the size of a single long hallway with several display cases, pieces of furniture, two sculptures, and walls of photos. There isn’t even an admission charge—when the school is open, so is the museum.
The Bath School bomboing is an event that remains the worst school violence in the nation’s history and the third worst mass murder within U.S. boundaries.
Within the museum is a copper statue in a mutely lit display case. Shortly after the blast, children from around the state of Michigan saved up their pennies to donate to the Bath School District to help with the recovery effort. Those pennies were used to commission Carlton Angell, an art instructor and museum artist at the University of Michigan, to create a copper statue memorializing those who died.
The statue is a sad one. It is one of a little girl holding a cat with the wind, possibly from the explosion blast, blowing back her hair and dress. The child’s grief is found in her eyes and face as the cat hangs limp over her arm. The base of the statue is engraved, “Donated by the Children of Michigan.”
In front of the statue’s display case is a cement cornerstone from the school that was built to replace the old school. The replacement school has since been torn down and new schools have been built for elementary, middle, and high school. The cornerstone contained an article about the statue, written at the time of its commission.
At the far end of the museum is another sculpture, this one of recent construct and a tribute to the lasting effect this tragedy has had on the township’s residents. It is a brass and wire tree with ceramic tiles hanging from it. Each of the ceramic tiles were made by students in an eighth-grade art class in 1999. They have their own unique shapes, designs, and paintings. And each one bears the name of one of the children who were killed in the blast that day. It is quiet testimony to the children of today who would reach out to the victims of their grandparents’ generation.
Near the brass and wire tree is an old-fashioned wooden desk and chair. When the explosions went off, one five-year-old student jumped up and managed to escape from his classroom. He ran home in fear, not realizing until he had gotten to his home a half mile away that he was clutching his desk in his arms. The family later donated the desk to the museum.
Andrew Kehoe protested having to pay taxes by killing 45 people (including himself) and Bath has never stopped mourning his victims.
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