Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (21 page)

Some of the doctors, veteran medics who had served in the Great War, hadn’t seen such carnage since working in makeshift battlefield hospitals.

Another wave of humanity arrived: frantic parents desperate to find this son or that daughter.

Outside the emergency room, a strange ambience enveloped the hospital. No one knew what to say. Words could not make sense of the chaos. Heavy silence stalked the hallways, offices, waiting rooms.

Beds were hastily installed in the hallways of the hospital’s second floor. Sparrow lacked a pediatric ward; this corridor would have to do for the moment.
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When Dean Sweet was found, he clearly was dead. No pulse. His crushed and broken body resembled an old rag doll torn and discarded beneath the wood, brick, plaster, and dust. A nearby wall was close to collapsing, threatening to bury the child further.

Dean’s body was removed with great care, then transported to the temporary morgue on the lawn.
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The digging contained scenes of horrific near misses and gruesome failures. William Klock, a deputy sheriff, found a youngster lying on the rubble. Before he could lift the unconscious child to safety, a precarious brick wall collapsed. The boy was crushed, Klock’s rescue thwarted by seconds.

Still the lawman pressed on. He came upon the legs of a little girl sticking out of the pile, her torso buried beneath. Klock steadied himself, and assessed the situation.

He took hold of the girl’s foot; it snapped off in Klock’s hands.
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As hard as he tried, Martin Milliman, the seventy-two-year-old volunteer, just couldn’t work his saw. He was desperate to help, but the sight of Glenn Smith’s wife cradling her husband’s mangled body just tore him up.

Another worker told the elderly man to leave. Struggling internally with what was unfolding in his beloved town, Milliman found his way out of the pile, through the maddened crowds, and home.
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One rescuer saw something, maybe a stick, lying on the ground. But the stick was an unusual shape and color, definitely something out of the ordinary. He reached over to pick it up.

The stick turned out to be a human backbone.
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Rescuers from around the area responded to the spreading news. Dr. Milton Shaw, head of the Red Cross team, was the first medical official to arrive. He was followed by an army of doctors and nurses from Lansing’s Sparrow and Saint Lawrence hospitals. There were medical workers from nearby towns and hamlets. Triage units sprouted across the lawns. Patients were prepped for ambulances.

Other rescuers poured in from throughout central Michigan. Professional and volunteer firefighters. Workers from automobile plants. Students from Michigan State College. Farmers. Factory and construction workers. Anyone and everyone within earshot of the blast.

Utter horror was countered by a ragtag collection of make-do saints.

When the school exploded Clare Gates was thrown headfirst through a window. He got up and ran for half a mile before he turned around to see what had happened. Hearing screams from the rubble, Gates ran back to the school.

He joined Howard Cushman, who’d been standing outside the school when he was knocked over by the first explosion. Gates and Cushman, both sixteen, paired up in the rescue effort. One, two, three, four, they dug out child after child.

All the kids they found were hurt to varying degrees. One small boy— a kid both Gates and Cushman knew well—was missing a leg.
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When George Carpenter, a new member of the Michigan State Police, heard the report of an explosion in Bath, he took to his Harley motorcycle, revved the engine, and headed out.

On the horizon as he approached the town was a strange cloud of dust. Screams filtered down the road.

He pulled up to the school. He could see the collapsed roof, a death trap for children covered in blood-muddied dust. Carpenter was grabbed by another officer.

They lifted a beam that blocked their way to the center of the rubble.
Carpenter and his newfound partner then worked their way across an unsteady path of brick, wood, and plaster.

Fig. 9. Nurses preparing wounded for transportation to the hospital.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

They could see a woman in bricks up to her waist, her upper body poking from the rubble like a precious flower.

Two children—both dead—were nestled in her arms. Carpenter and his partner gently lifted their bodies from the woman’s protective grasp as she feebly let go.

The woman, Hazel Weatherby, somehow had managed to keep the children close to her from the moment the roof caved in. Once the officers had her students, Weatherby gave in to death.
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Sheriff Fox and William Searl knew they were nearing Bath when they saw the cars. Machines were backed up on the main road into town.

Fox drove his official automobile around the traffic jam. He was waved through cordons set up by State Police officers on the scene. He
and Searl passed through the barrier, soaking in the incredible scene. It was monumental destruction beyond their comprehension.

Fig. 10. Loading an ambulance in the shadow of destruction.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

People running: men, women, teenagers, children. Howls of anguish, cries for help, sounds of automobiles, the clunky bang of bricks falling or being tossed. The north wing of the school building now a mound of rubble pockmarked with frantic men pulling at debris. White sheets, stained with blood, covering what must be small bodies stretching across the lawn. The smoking remains of some sort of vehicle. A few cars nearby, ruined by fire.

A vision of hell on earth.

Fox and Searl got out of the car. The area was, for all practical purposes, the scene of a crime. Kehoe’s name was being whispered as the man behind it all. Kehoe’s farm was burning. Kehoe blew himself up and took Superintendent Huyck with him.

The sheriff didn’t have much time to look; someone quickly asked him to come to a nearby ditch.
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Across from the school, on the edge of Frank and Leone Smith’s property, a pair of volunteers from Lansing, Alex Urqhart and Dr. Milton Shaw, the Red Cross director, were making bandages for victims. One of them noticed something at the side of the road, a reddish lump with tattered clothing. They went over to investigate.

Urqhart, a veteran of the world war, was unnerved. He’d seen a lot of carnage in his day, sights that would turn a man’s blood cold, things that could shock a soul to its core. Yet nothing he’d seen in the Great War could compare to what lay in the ditch.

It was a body, albeit one blown all to hell. The corpse was completely gutted, a ripped up carcass, a hunk of meat and bone. Though the body was in shambles, the face and head were more or less intact. Grey hair matted what remained of the skull.

Gingerly they walked to the clump. In the mess of clothes, two documents poked out of a fold that once might have been a coat or shirt pocket.

One item was a driver’s license, the other a bankbook. Both were issued in the name of Andrew P. Kehoe.

A woman, hair wild, face streaked with dirty tears, stopped suddenly near the two men. Either she was running to the school or away from it; it was hard to tell.

She looked at them. “What’s the name?” she said.

Urqhart examined the papers.

“Andrew Kehoe.”

“That’s the man!” the anonymous woman screamed.

Up in the telephone wires, they could see part of an automobile, the headlight attached and glass still intact.
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Sheriff Fox arrived. He was handed the license and bankbook. The lawman carefully studied the documents.

Still, no assumptions were made that these human remains were Kehoe’s. A positive identification had to be made. And there was enough left of the face on this mess to complete the task.

A high school boy who had a passing acquaintance with Kehoe was brought to the scene. The kid was pretty sure this was the man. Mel Kyes, who sat on the school board with Kehoe, was also brought in to look over
the face. The lifeless countenance, as near as Kyes could tell, was indeed Kehoe’s.

Fig. 11. The remains of Andrew P. Kehoe.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

Finally they fetched Sydney Howell, Kehoe’s neighbor, who was always friendly with the man. Howell, more than anyone, could positively identify the remains.

Howell clambered into the ditch, shaky over what he might see. He took in the gruesome sight. Eyes, nose, face, hair: yes, the clump was Kehoe.

Terrible feelings gripped Howell to the core. How could this man, his neighbor, burn down his farm, blow up a school, kill so many children, then blast himself and Huyck to pieces? It wasn’t the Andrew Kehoe he knew.

In the days to come, Howell struggled with these thoughts.
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A member of the Michigan State Police handed Chief Lane the damning evidence found at the Kehoe place. “I want to place this in your charge,”
the uniformed officer told him. “It was taken from a dresser drawer at the farm.”