The Bath School Disaster

The single most terrible school house atrocity in history, the Bath School Disaster, was carried out without the use of a single gun. 

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With all due respect and sympathy to the victims and their families of the Newport, Columbine,  McDonald's, and Virginia Tech shootings, the Oklahoma bombing, and other mass murders, they were not the worst mass murders of children in the US.

On May 18, 1927, 45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew Kehoe dynamited the new school building in Bath, Michigan out of revenge over his foreclosed farm due in part to the taxes required to pay for the new school.

We found the following editorial excerpt to be interesting in that it asks many of the same questions we are asking ourselves today.

Clinton County Republican-News
May 19, 1927

THE BATH HORROR

Forty children were killed Wednesday forenoon at Bath.  As many more were injured, some of them crippled for life.  At least four adults, honorable and useful citizens were robbed of life.  Never before has Clinton county been visited by such a tragedy - and never again, we hope.  And all this was the result of the insane rage of another citizen of that peaceful Clinton county community.

Every week - almost daily it sometimes seems - people lose their lives in groups.  All over the country and all over the world there are tragedies where dozens of innocent people go to death.  But seldom does this happen to a group of children.  And almost never are these horrors the result of a fiend's planning as was the case in Bath yesterday.

Andrew Kehoe, according to people of Bath, has long been opposed to the township agricultural school in that village.  He fought its establishment.  He fought the expense of operating it.  He was a leader of those who were opposed to the higher tax it imposed upon the community and township.  Because of his activity  and the leadership he fell heir to, he became radical and most unreasonable on this subject.  Being heavily in debt on his farm, the added taxes contributed to his loss of the farm on a mortgage this spring.  Evidently this was the last straw.  Andrew Kehoe became a maniac.

Light hearted, laughing children left their homes on the beautiful spring morning for the school.  Less than two hours later their mangled little forms were lying in a mass of wreckage and debris.  Why?  Because one man was incapable, or too stubborn, to recognize the need of modern educational facilities.

Fond mothers and fathers waved cheery goodbyes to their loved little ones early Wednesday morning.  Two hours later they gropingly lifed the edges of a quilt or sheet that covered a twisted little body, praying that God had spared their little one, only to find the terrible worst.  Why?  Because one man, Andrew Kehoe, allowed his passions to run rampant so long that it resulted in maniacal wholesale murder.

One stoical young father, already having identified the lifeless remains of two of his dear little ones, joined the search among the ruins only to uncover the third baby of his little brood.  As he tenderly carried this child toward the grass plot where the other two lay, the agony in his face was terrible to witness.  Would Andrew Kehoe in his sane days have caused this father and mother the anguish they are now experiencing?  No!  He allowed the comparatively trivial problems of his workaday world to unbalance his mind.  He forgot God.  He forgot his friends.  He ignored the beauty of the spring day.  He was oblivious to the sacredness and beauty of innocent childhood.  Black, bitter and unreasoning wrath filled his soul.  He would kill.  He would [maim].  He would wreck.  Anything, everything - nothing was too terrible to satisfy the rage he had developed - and all because of a few paltry dollars.

What is the lesson?

What can the people of the country - for the whole country has been attracted by the horror of the catastrophe - learn or conclude from Andrew Kehoe's dreadful act? Is the Bath township tax situation serious enough to warrant despondency or insanity among its citizens?  Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?

Andrew Kehoe's act has no parallel, so far as we know, in the history of Michigan.  That he was insane there is little doubt.  But he was not always insane.  To start with he was merely antagonistic.  Then he became radical.  Constant brooding resulted in murderous insanity.  He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance - but with him to his ignominious end he took the lives of over forty children.

What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness.  What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals.  What an overwhelming and crushing grief for mothers, fathers, relatives and intimate friends.  Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form.  There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public.

What are we going to do about it?