Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (16 page)

The inkwell on Willis Cressman’s study hall desk flew up to the ceiling like a bullet. The building shook around the teenager; it felt like he was rising right up into the air.

For some unknown reason, Cressman later recalled, he didn’t hear a thing. But the sight of that flying inkwell stayed with him for years.
³⁰

Ada Belle Dolton, a fifth grader, was knocked out of her desk. It didn’t hurt; instead it felt like she was floating. Above her she could see her classmates and their desks hurtling through space. Through the spaces in between, Ada Belle glimpsed rays of sunshine.
³¹

Principal Huggett felt the church rock. Pews tipped over as the floor rolled. Huggett grabbed a nearby desk to steady himself. Once he got his bearings, he, Bertha, and Thelma ran out of the building. Huggett saw an enormous cloud of dust, specks of plaster and dirt hovering around what remained of the north wing of the school.
³²

Evelyn Paul, the home economics teacher, heard a deafening blast and then saw an intense flash of light. A sharp sensation burned through her shoulder as a splinter of wood shot into her flesh. Plaster rained down, filling the room with powdery dust, and in a moment all was dark.

“What is it?” she heard students cry.

Paul opened her eyes. Through a window, penetrating the thick dust, she saw a beam of light.
³³

Cleo Clayton, an eight year old, leaped through a window, hit the ground, and ran to the front lawn of the school. For the moment, he was safe.

Seventeen-year-old Perry Hart, was in town running an errand for his mother. He’d dropped out of school some time before; the classroom just wasn’t the place for Perry.

He heard the noise and felt the ground shake under his feet. He looked toward the sound. Something had happened at Bath Consolidated. He ran toward the school. His three sisters, Iola, Vivian, and Elva, and his brother Percy were inside.
³⁴

In the woods, Josephine Cushman heard a huge
boom!
It shook the trees and rattled the branches. The noise sounded like it came from the direction of the schoolhouse.

She and her friends quickly headed back to the building. As they passed a gas station on the corner, the owner shouted to them, “Hurry up! The school has blown up!”
³⁵

Fresh from his dealings with Smith and Kehoe, Albert Detluff started the workday at his blacksmith shop. This morning an automobile was hoisted in the air while an employee worked on the engine. Detluff went upstairs to attend to business.

At 8:45 an enormous boom sounded through the building. Detluff immediately ran downstairs. The hoist must have given way, sending the machine crashing to the floor. “What is going on down here?” he called out. No one answered. The building seemed to have emptied in the wake of the noise.

Detluff went outside, ran around the building, and then came back to the front. There was a man there now, screaming an alarm.

“The schoolhouse is blowed up!” the stranger shouted.
³⁶

Detluff immediately thought of his daughter Marcia who was in a home economics class that morning.

On his farm west of town, Job Sleight worked on his morning chores. His head was throbbing; He was fighting off a bad cold with little success. “My head feels like I stepped into a hole,” he thought. But, headache or no headache, chores had to be completed.

His head boomed once more. This was no headache pain; he instantly knew that something nearby had exploded. Maybe it was the men from Consumers Power blasting holes to set the new roadside poles. No, he realized, it was probably his neighbor Andrew Kehoe blowing off pyrotol, maybe ripping old tree stumps loose from his fields.

Sleight looked in the direction of Kehoe’s farm. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.

A woman appeared on the road, running as though the world depended on it. It was another neighbor, Mrs. Miller. “They say the schoolhouse has been blown up!” she breathlessly exclaimed.

“That can’t be possible,” Sleight said. Again, he looked toward Kehoe’s farm. In seconds, the picture had dramatically changed. Buildings on the property were now engulfed in flame. Several dull blasts sounded through the air. Sleight knew the sound immediately. It was exploding dynamite.
³⁷

George Hall prowled the land near his farm looking for two calves that

had got loose. He saw smoke in the sky not far from his place.

Will Horning, one of Hall’s neighbors, was in sight. “Did you see this

smoke?” he called over.

“Yes,” Horning called back. “I heard an awful explosion.”

Hall got his machine and picked up Horning and another neighbor,

Mrs. Virgaline Zeeb. They followed the smoke to Kehoe’s farm.
³⁸

Monty Ellsworth was planting melons. It was a good morning for the task, quiet and sunny. Without warning, a loud noise surrounded him.
³⁹

Ellsworth’s wife Mable was cleaning upstairs in the house when she heard a tremendous sound. Immediately she ran to a window and looked out. On a clear day she could see the chimney of the schoolhouse just a couple of miles east of the farm. Now all she could see was a cloud of white dust in the direction of Bath Consolidated.

Faint screams carried through the air.
⁴⁰

Sidney Howell was working in his yard with the help of his sons, Robb and Alden, and Melvin Armstrong, his twenty-eight-year-old neighbor. A strong report cracked through the air.

The four men looked up. “That is about the direction of the school,” Howell said. Could the boiler have blown up?

A second
bang
thundered loudly. This one sounded like someone firing a high-caliber gun, and the noise was definitely closer. It seemed like it came from the Kehoe place. Smoke curled above the neighboring farm. Ready to help, the men got into Armstrong’s machine and quickly drove to the scene.
⁴¹

The Consumers Power linemen atop the wooden poles felt the ground shake. In the distance, they could see a cloud of dust. Nearby a farm was in flames. Something drastic was unfolding in Bath.

Ellsworth saw a cloud of smoke pouring out of Kehoe’s barn. Clearly more than the barn was on fire. A hovering black cloud was growing over the property, thick and furious.
⁴²

The school’s roof was solidly planted on the remains of the first-floor classrooms. The outer walls had crumbled to the sides, although a back wall remained steady. It was as if a giant hand had smashed the north wing’s roof into the ground, leaving the remainder of the school untouched save for the broken windows. Among the chunks of wood and broken wall, tiny bodies could be seen. The screams of children in the rubble were joined by the frantic cries of parents now flooding the grounds.

Mable Ellsworth ran out of the house and joined her husband. “My God,” she cried, “the school is blowed up!”
⁴³

Ellsworth looked east and saw a black and white plume about one hundred feet high coming from the direction of the school. Kehoe’s farm would have to burn; the school children needed his help. Among the students was Ellsworth’s son, a second-grade student. Ellsworth ran to his machine and headed to the scene of the disaster.

His Ford pickup was achingly slow.
⁴⁴

O. H. Buck, a Consumers Power foreman, and some of his men crawled through a broken window of the Kehoe farmhouse. They peered through the smoky living room, looking for anyone who might be caught within the inferno. For the moment the would-be rescuers holed up in the north end of the home while flames licked the southern portion.

Buck and his men called out, hoping they might reach someone trapped in the blaze. There was no answer. Instead, they decided to salvage what furniture they could before the fire spread into the living room. A davenport was shoved out the window, then a table and chairs.

Buck looked around to see what else might be saved. There was something in the corner of the room.

Dynamite.

“Without thinking much about what I was doing,” Buck later said, “I picked up an armful [of the explosives] and handed [it] to one of the men.”

Fig. 6. The ruins of the north wing’s first-and second-floor classrooms. Note the jackets still hanging neatly on coat hooks in the upper left-hand corner.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

The room was thick with smoke, choking the oxygen. Buck and his men got the hell out.
⁴⁵

Hall, Horning, and Mrs. Zeeb pulled into the yard. They could see that Kehoe’s barn was beyond saving, but maybe some furniture could be pulled from the house. From the looks of it, some Consumers Power men were already trying to do the same. Maybe Hall could help.

A man burst out of the house.

“My God!” he yelled. “There is enough dynamite in there to blow up the county!”
⁴⁶

Across the road Buck heard a woman’s voice. “The school has been blown up!” she screamed over and over.

What was going on?

Buck and his men ran to their machines. They were needed at the school, not at this madhouse of fire and dynamite.

As they reached the car, Buck felt an enormous explosion from behind. His body slammed into a truck.
⁴⁷

As he ran across the road Hall heard explosions behind him, three, four, five, six.

Lulu Harte shouted at him, frantic. “The schoolhouse is blowed,” she said.

To hell with Kehoe’s place. Hall left the bizarre scene, got in his machine, and raced toward the school. He was charged with adrenaline and fear. His three children, Billy, George Jr., and Willa, were students at Bath Consolidated.
⁴⁸