Bath,
Michigan School Disaster
May
18, 1927
MANIAC BLOWS UP SCHOOL, KILLS 42, MOSTLY
CHILDREN; HAD PROTESTED HIGH TAXES
33 PUPILS AMONG VICTIMS
He Then Kills Himself and 3 Others by
Dynamiting Auto in Bath, Mich.
CHILDREN PINNED IN DEBRIS
Others Hurled Against Walls or Out Windows –
Searchers Still Hunt for Missing
AGONIZING SCENES IN YARD
Distraught Parents Find Little Ones Dead Beneath
Blankets – 85 to 95 Injured.
(Special to The New York Times)
BATH, Mich., May 18. -- The insane
revenge of a man maddened by financial worries
brought death to at least thirty-three children
today when the Consolidated School in this
little village of 300 souls, eight miles
north-east of Lansing, was dynamited just after
the morning bell had called the classes
together. Forty-one dead have been identified
and one is still unknown.
The north end of the school collapsed, and
undoubtedly there are bodies buried in the
debris. From eighty-five to ninety-five were
injured.
ANDREW KEHOE, Treasurer of the village School
Board, was the man who placed in the basement of
the school the dynamite that wrecked one wing of
the building and brought death and injury to
children and teachers. KEHOE'S house and barn, a
mile or so out of town, were destroyed in
another explosion and fire caused by himself a
little before the blast in the school.
KEHOE himself was killed, together with EMORY
E. HUYCK, Superintendent of the school, in a
third explosion, this one in KEHOE'S car as it
stood in front of the demolished school a half
hour after the disaster there.
A mortgage on KEHOE'S farm was foreclosed
last week. He was heard to complain that the
high school taxes made it impossible for him to
lift the mortgage. It is believed KEHOE'S mad
act was caused by his desire for revenge on the
School Board.
One teacher was killed and three seriously
injured. The village postmaster was injured and
later died.
Hunt for Bodies by Searchlight.
Under the lurid glare of searchlights, playing
on a tangled bed of ruins, State Police and
volunteer workers continued the search tonight
for missing children. The list of dead was
placed at forty-two late tonight by Prosecuting
Attorney KELLY SEARL of Clinton County, who is
directing the rescue work.
Forty-four of the seriously injured were in
Lansing hospitals and between forty and fifty,
with minor injuries were in their homes here.
Witnesses say that KEHOE sat in his
automobile in front of the school and gloated as
he watched the bodies of the children hurled
into the air by his diabolical plot. The, as the
ruins of the wrecked building settled on the
dead and dying children, he fired the dynamite
in his own automobile killing himself, HUYCK,
GLENN SMITH, postmaster, and SMITH'S
father-in-law, NELSON McFARREN.
List of the Identified Dead.
Following are the known dead:
BAUERLE, ARNOLD.
BERGEN, HENRY.
BROMUNDT, ROBERT, 12.
BROMUNDT, AMELIA, 11; sister of ROBERT.
BURNETT, FLOYD.
BURNETT, GEORGE, 12.
CHAPMAN, RUSSELL, 10.
CHAPMAN, EARL, 12.
COCHRAN, ROBERT, 8.
CUSHMAN, RALPH, 7.
EWING, EARL, 12.
FOOTE, CATHERINE, 11.
FRITZ, MARJORIE.
GEISENHAVER, CARLYLE, 10.
HALL, WILLA, 11.
HALL, GEORGE, JR., 8; brother of WILLA.
HART, STANLEY, 10.
HART, ROBERT, 9.
HART, VIVIAN, 10.
HART, PERCY, 12.
HART, IOLA, 13.
HARTE, GALEN.
HUNTER, LOREN, 14.
HUYCK, EMORY B., Superintendent of School.
JOHNS, DORIS, 10.
KEHOE, ANDREW, Treasurer of School Board.
McDONALD, THELMA.
McFARREN, CLARENCE, 14.
McFARHEN, NELSON, retired farmer.
METCOFF, EMERSON.
NICHOLS, EMMA, 12.
RICHARDSON, RICHARD, 13.
ROBB, ELSIE, 11.
SHUERTS, PAULINE.
SMITH, GLENN, Postmaster.
WEATHERBEE, HAZEL, 20, teacher, of Okemos.
WITCHELL, ELIZABETH.
WITCHELL, LUCILLE, sister of ELIZABETH.
WOODMAN, LENORE, 9.
ZIMMERMAN, LLOYD, 12.
ZIMMERMAN, GEORGE, 10.
Children Huddle About Teacher.
The explosion in the school came at 9:40 A. M.,
ten minutes after classes began. About 260
pupils were in the building. There would have
been more but this is commencement week for the
high school and few seniors were present. The
attendance was kept down also by the fact that
an examination was scheduled for 10 o'clock and
those who were to take the examination had not
yet arrived.
The explosion wrecked the entire north wing
of the building, which housed the third, fourth,
fifth and sixth grades. The building was in the
shape of a “T”, the north wing corresponding to
the upright of the letter.
Children in the rooms in the south wing were
uninjured. In the first grade room the little
ones were marching about singing to the music of
a phonograph when the blast went off with a
terrific detonation which shattered the windows
of neighboring houses. The children shrieked and
huddled about their teacher, MISS BERNICE
STERLING. The air was choked with dust, but in
the hall the voice of the principal, FLOYD
HUGGETT, was heard calling to the children.
Teachers Lead Children Out.
Led by HUGGETT and the teachers, most of the
children in the unshattered[sic] portion of the
building were led to safety in orderly fashion.
Some of those on the lower floor, frightened,
jumped out of the windows. The glass had been
broken by the explosion.
The villagers came running and at once
started the work of rescue. Leading in the work
was Superintendent HUYCK. The workers brought
scores of the ninety trapped children, moaning
and shrieking, out of the ruins in their arms.
The piercing lamentations of mothers added to
the heartrending cries of the sufferers and the
terror-stricken screams of children.
About twenty minutes after the explosion
KEHOE'S car was noticed at the curb in front of
the school. No one knows how long it had been
there. KEHOE was standing beside the car,
talking with HUYCK, who had stopped for a moment
to rest.
GLEN SMITH, village Postmaster, and NELSON
McFARREN, an old man, were standing a few feet
away. Suddenly, witnesses said, KEHOE took a
rifle from his car and fired it into the rear
seat, which apparently had been stacked with
dynamite. There was a flash and a roar, and
KEHOE was hurled through the air, his body
dismembered. HUYCK'S body likewise was blown to
bits. McFARREN was killed outright. Both of
SMITH'S legs were broken and he was injured
internally, he died later.
Aid Rushed to Stricken Village.
About fifteen minutes before the school
explosion, there was a blast in KEHOE'S home on
a farm west of the town. The resulting fire
spread to the barn, and both his home and barn
were destroyed.
Following the school explosion, a call for
aid was sent to Lansing. Every available doctor,
nurse and ambulance was rushed to Bath. A
detachment from the Lansing Fire Department was
sent to do rescue work. St. John's and Ovid also
sent firemen.
State police took charge of the rescue work.
They were aided by Lansing police and cadets
from the Michigan State College at East Lansing.
Two large Lansing construction companies sent
rescue parties. So many persons from the
surrounding towns and cities drove to the scene
of the disaster that the State Police were
forced to take charge of traffic regulation and
parking. Automobiles were parked for two miles
into the country on all roads leading into Bath.
Two or three thousand people were crowded into
the school grounds.
Dynamite Wired Together.
State Police, exploring the basement of that
portion of the building undamaged by the
explosion, found about 500 pounds of dynamite
planted in such a manner that a portion was
under every room in the school. If it had
exploded the school would have been demolished
and almost every child would have been killed or
hurt.
The units in the unfired dynamite were wired
together. Apparently they had been connected
with those fired in the north section of the
building. Two lines of wire were found leading
from the school across the yard. They ended near
the spot where KEHOE'S car stood.
It is the theory of the State police that
KEHOE fired the blast from his car by a coil.
They declare the development of a short circuit
in the line probably kept the dynamite in the
south wing from firing and saved the children in
that part of the school.
RAZEL WEBERBEE, teacher of the third and
fourth grades, was almost instantly killed.
Severe injuries were suffered by MRS. BLANCH
HART, fifth grade teacher; MISS EVA GUBBINS,
sixth grade teacher, and MISS NINA MATSON,
English teacher in the high school.
MISS MATSON was alone in the library on the
second floor at the time and the other teachers
were in their classrooms. The three injured
teachers were taken to Lansing hospitals.
Governor Doffs Coat to Help.
Governor and MRS. GRED W. GREEN visited the
scene late this afternoon. Governor GREEN threw
aside his coat and assisted the crews who were
busy pulling on long cables attached to the
shattered walls. MRS. GREEN assisted the nurses
and friends who were working over the less
seriously injured and offered sympathy to the
grief-stricken mothers.
KEHOE is believed to have blown up the school
house in revenge for the school board's recent
refusal to reduce his taxes. On this occasion
KEHOE engaged in a bitter quarrel with other
members of the board.
A mortgage on his farm home held by MRS.
LAWRENCE PRICE of Lansing, an aunt of his wife,
was foreclosed recently. MRS. PRICE, the wealthy
widow of a founder of an automobile body
manufacturing company, said at her home here
today that KEHOE had made no effort to pay the
mortgage, which had been placed on his property
several years ago.
The foreclosure, together with the quarrel
with the School Board, is believed to have
unsettled his mind.
Last night KEHOE called MRS. PRICE from Bath
and said that his wife, who had been in a
Lansing hospital, had returned to her home at
Bath, but that he was taking her to visit
relatives in Jackson. Whether she died in the
blast that wrecked the KEHOE home today is not
known. She has not yet been found.
Package Hunted as Dynamite.
Fear that the devastating machinations of
KEHOE'S unbalanced mind might not be limited to
the school explosion was expressed by
investigators, who said they learned that the
farmer soon after 8 o'clock this morning sent by
express a box, believed to have contained
dynamite, to GLEN SMITH, a Lansing insurance
agent, and his bondsman, as Treasurer of the
School Board. The package is being hunted in
express consignments.
CLARE GATES, a twelve-year-old boy, between
sobs, told being hurled through a rear window
when the blast occurred. As he spoke, a boy
beside him who had also escaped injury, wept.
His younger sister was still buried beneath the
debris.
An official of the Lansing unit of the Fisher
Body Corporation, who chanced to be in Bath at
the time of the explosion, ordered the Lansing
plant closed and all workmen sent to aid in
removing the bodies. The men were taken to Bath
in motor buses. Other men were sent to Bath from
the Olds Motor Works here.
OSCAR OLANDER, head of the Michigan
Department of Public Safety, sent all available
State troopers to Bath to aid in rescue and in
keeping order.
CHARLES LANE, the State Fire Marshal, has
gone to Bath to begin an investigation.
The greatest disorder prevails in Bath. There is
scarcely a family that did not have at least one
child in school. After the explosion mothers
thronged the school grounds and attempted to
fight their way through the cordon of officers.
Survivors Tell of Explosion.
BATH, Mich., May 18 (AP) – Survivors of
the disaster described the explosion as an
“awful crash”, followed an instant later by
crashing of the walls and the falling of the
ceilings. Many of the pupils were crushed at
their desks as the tons of bricks and beams
crashed down.
State police said KEHOE apparently had
carried the dynamite into the school building
during the night and arranged his wiring. He was
seen to drive up in his automobile in front of
the building soon after classes convened.
Completing his plans, he is believed to have run
a wire from his automobile, in which other
explosives were stored, to the charges in the
basement. Rifle shells, several of which were
found near the battered automobile, served as
fuses.
Panic ensued among the school children with
the first rumble of the blast. Terrified, both
teachers and pupils rushed to the exits, only to
be caught beneath the falling walls and ceiling,
loosened by a second blast. Some leaped to the
ground from lower floor windows while others
stumbled over the bodies of their playmates in a
mad rush for the doorways.
CLARE GATES, 12, sobbed out a story of how he
had been hurled through a rear window in one of
the schoolrooms. The youth at the time was
urging rescuers to remove the body of his
younger sister, still buried under the ruins.
Bodies Hurled Against Walls.
MISS BERNICE STERLING and MISS EVELYN PAUL, two
teachers who escaped with only minor injuries,
described their recollections of the blasts.
“Without warning”, MISS STERLING said, “this
terrible explosion came. I saw the bodies of my
children hurled against the walls or through the
windows. Then I do not remember much what
happened. The explosion stunned me and I could
not do much until help came.”
“An awful crash”, followed by crashing in of
the walls and the ceilings, was MISS PAUL'S
description of the blast.
News of the disaster spread rapidly, for the
reverberations were heard in all parts of the
village. Hardly a family in the village did not
have at least one child enrolled among the
school's normal attendance of about 200. Five
children of one family were among the identified
dead tonight.
Frantic mothers rushed screaming to the
school grounds and struggled wildly with
volunteer workers in an attempt to enter the
ruins in search of their children. Fathers,
summoned from their places of employment, joined
the horror-stricken crowd and confusion reigned.
The workers soon began carrying out the
little forms of the pupils and placed them under
blankets in a temporary morgue in the school
yard. Finally, convinced that search in the
ruins was being cared for by workers, the
parents turned to a survey of the silent forms
in the school yard morgue.
A moan from a mother or a stifled cry here
and there from a father as a blanket was lifted
testified that another search was ended. Many of
the mothers and fathers clasped in their arms
the bodies of their children and carried them to
their homes, refusing the services of ambulances
and hearses that came from surrounding towns.
Other Pitiful Scenes in Yard.
Other pitiful scenes, without the spectre of
death, were enacted in other parts of the school
yard. Other fathers and mothers found their
children injured, and still others overjoyed at
finding theirs unscathed. The search of some of
the parents was not ended until a trip to
Lansing found their little ones undergoing
treatment in hospitals there.
News of the tragedy also spread rapidly
through the surrounding farming community and
provided anxious moments for scores of farm
homes, for many of the school pupils came here
in buses which made regular stops along the
highways. Farmers came in from the fields and
soon the roads were dotted with automobiles
scurrying to the village.
With the arrival of more rescue workers, the
task of moving the tumbled mass of brick and
timbers was made more systematic. The roof,
which was shattered, and the piles masonry were
torn down and removed.
State Police checking over the ruins of
KEHOES farm building late today found a charred
home-made battery manufactured from a spark
plug, a small can of gasoline and a coil.
Several hundred feet of wire were attached to
the device, and it is believed this was the
mechanism used to wreck his home. A sign on a
fence in the rear of the farm born the words
“Criminals are made and not born.”
As the work of digging into the wreckage
continued, a farmer, clad in soil-stained
clothing, sat weeping beside the bodies of two
of his small sons who had been carried from the
building about the time he arrived from his
home. For more than an hour he sat in that
position refusing to stir and would not allow
the bodies to be moved until he arranged to take
them to the farm home.
The body of MISS WEATHERBEE was found pinned
under a heavy wreckage of timbers, which also
held the broken bodies of many of her small
pupils.
KEHOE was a graduate of Michigan State
College and was considered an expert
electrician. His neighbors considered him a good
farmer, for his lands were well kept and his
buildings well furnished. He had no children.
Recounting the man's characteristics tonight,
neighbors recalled that he had appeared
intelligent, but with a tendency toward being
pugnacious. Several controversies with members
of the School Board and the Superintendent, they
continued, appeared to have left him morose
during recent weeks. The mortgaging of his farm
and subsequent foreclosure added to the
condition, it is believed.
The New York Times New York 1927-05-19
Submitted & transcribed by Stu
Beitler Thank you,
Stu!
The Bath School disaster is the name given to
three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA,
on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people and
injured 58. Most of the victims were children in
the second to sixth grades attending the Bath
Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the
deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S.
history. The perpetrator was school board member
Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax
that had been levied to fund the construction of
the school building. He blamed the additional
tax for financial hardships which led to
foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These
events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his
attack.
On the morning of May 18, Kehoe first killed his
wife and then set his farm buildings on fire. As
fire fighters arrived at the farm, an explosion
devastated the north wing of the school
building, killing many of the people inside.
Kehoe used a detonator to ignite dynamite and
hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had
secretly planted inside the school over the
course of many months. As rescuers started
gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up,
stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his
shrapnel-filled vehicle, killing himself and the
school superintendent, and killing and injuring
several others. During the rescue efforts,
searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds
(230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol
planted throughout the basement of the school's
south wing.
more
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
IN MEMORY
OF THOSE WHO PERISHED
IN THE BATH SCHOOL DISASTER, MAY 18, 1927
Emory E. Huyck, Superintendent
Blanche E. Harte, Teacher
Miss Hazel I. Weatherby, Teacher
Children
Arnold V. Bauerle
Herman Bergan
Henry Bergan
Amelia Bromund
Robert Bromund
Floyd E. Burnett
Russell Chapman
Cleo Claton
Robert Cochran
Ralph A. Cushman
Earl E. Ewing
Katherine O. Foot
Margory Fritz
Carlyle W. Geisenhaver
Beatrice Gibbs
George Hall
Willa M. Hall
Iola I. Hart
Percy E. Hart
Vivian O. Hart
Gailand L. Harte
LaVere R. Harte
Stanley H. Harte
Francis O. Hoppener
Cecial L. Hunter
Doris E. Johns
Thelma I. McDonald
Clarence W. McFarren
J. Emerosn Medcoff
Emma A. Nichols
Richard D. Richardson
Elsie M. Robb
Pauline M. Shirts
Elizabeth J. Witchell
Lucile J. Witchell
Harold L. Woodman
George O. Zimmerman
Lloyd Zimmerman
Nelson McFarren, citizen
Glenn O. Smith, citizen
Plaque commemorating the victims of the
Bath School disaster, May 18, 1927. Bath
Township, Michigan.
View photo of the plaque from Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia.
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