Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (24 page)

Another newspaper, the
Toledo Blade
hired an airplane piloted by Leroy Davis to whisk Norman Hauger, their head photographer, to Bath. Other
Blade
staff cameramen piled into a car and hit the gas in a 130-mile race from their Ohio base to the Michigan location.

Somewhere near Jackson, Michigan, one of the engines on Davis’s plane gave out. The aircraft careened wildly, then hit the ground in a hard bounce of a landing. Although pilot and passenger weren’t hurt, Hauger’s deadline loomed large. Gripping his cameras and film, which
fortunately survived the crash, Hauger ran across the field to a nearby road. He waved his arms wildly, finally catching the attention of a passing motorist, who drove Hauger into Jackson. With little time to waste, Hauger procured a taxi to drive him to Bath, about fifty miles away. As soon as he hit town, he went into action, then got to a railway station for the trip back to Toledo.

The
Blade
photographers who drove to Bath and back had an uneventful journey, but they didn’t move as quickly as Hauger. He returned Wednesday evening and prepared photographs for the morning edition; his colleagues didn’t get to the office until well after midnight.
⁵⁵

Although county prosecutor William Searl was well grounded in standard criminal procedures, devastation by bombing was beyond his realm of understanding.

The area was crawling with authorities: State Police, regional law enforcement officers and fire department men, National Guard and military people. Volunteers flooded the scene, breaking down the tasks at hand: search and rescue, care for the wounded, accounting for the dead. Yet at the heart of the matter a school wired to explode—and the blazing house west of town—clearly were criminal investigations under Searl’s jurisdiction.

Time and again he was told that Andrew Kehoe was responsible. Searl knew the name; Kehoe had been his father’s client in the recent mortgage dispute. Although he maintained an exterior cool, Searl needed some assurance. He worked his way through the sea of people in search of a telephone to call his father.

Kelly Searl couldn’t believe what his son told him. A school blown up. Children dead. A spectacular murder-suicide. Preliminary reports that Andrew Kehoe—whose farm was ablaze—was behind all this mayhem.

Their conversation was brief but supportive. Kelly Searl didn’t give William advice as much as the courage to face the maelstrom. Action was needed, fast, decisive action.

Searl returned to the school with no plans in mind but determination in his heart. He met with Fox, Lane, and Morse and learned what he could. He moved the morgue from the lawn to the Community Hall. A central area was needed in which to identify the dead, a place that wouldn’t be in the way of rescue workers. The Community Hall, just a
block from the school, was the ideal place. Bodies could quickly be transported to the location. What’s more, parents could find their children in a place that provided some privacy—albeit limited—giving them some solitude for their grief. Bodies already claimed were moved from the grassy knoll into hearses; unidentified victims were taken to the Community Hall.

Next Searl demanded an inquest. Getting the facts was paramount. That process would begin the next day, he declared. Potential jurors were immediately rounded up from among the rescuers and bystanders.
⁵⁶

Rescue workers stumbled over a section of debris. They’d pulled plenty of bodies, some alive, some dead, from the rubble and wanted to be sure they had found all victims before moving on.

“I think that’s everyone in this area,” said one of the men.

For a second silence hung in the air, then screams pierced the rubble.

Ava Sweet and Lillian Wildt heard the worker. Now, terrified that they would be left to die, the two girls released all the energy they had saved by lying still.

Their screams were answered with furious digging. When the workers reached Ava, they found her head trapped beneath a board. Unable to loosen it without the threat of hurting Ava, they sawed the board on either side of the girl’s head until she could be removed safely.
⁵⁷

As he left the luncheon at the Olds Hotel, someone provided Joseph Dunnebacke with a fresh copy of the
Lansing State Journal,
an “extra” edition with new details on the unfolding tragedy. A name jumped out at him: Andrew Kehoe.

It couldn’t be. Though troubled by this development, Dunnebacke kept his cool. His next stop was the Saint Lawrence Hospital, where he met with the sister superior. It occurred to the attorney that she might need nurses from a hospital in nearby Jackson; Dunnebacke offered his services as a driver. No, the sister told him, they had everything under control.

Kehoe’s potential involvement weighed heavy on Dunnebacke’s mind. He knew what a troublesome individual Andrew Kehoe could be, but something of this magnitude? It didn’t seem possible.

Dunnebacke opened the door to his law office. Three people were inside waiting: Elizabeth, Genevieve, and Loretta Price. Nellie’s sisters.

Frantic and terrified, they asked Dunnebacke for help in finding Nellie. Should they try to find her in Bath, contact the Vosts in Jackson, or sit tight and hope for the best while expecting the worst?

Hoping to ease their worries, Dunnebacke drove the Price sisters to the Vost home. On their arrival, their fears amplified.

No, the Vosts told their unexpected visitors, Nellie was not staying with them. Whatever Kehoe had said over the telephone was wrong; neither Andrew nor Nellie had come calling on Monday night.

There was only one choice now. Dunnebacke and the Prices headed to Bath. Like the rescuers and emergency medical workers, the four became snarled in traffic as they approached the small town. After arriving, they talked to the Kehoes’ neighbors. What about Nellie, they asked.

No one had seen her since Kehoe brought her home Monday night.

All they could do now was pray.
⁵⁸

Nellie Cushman waited with Josephine while Albert worked with other rescuers to find Ralph. Mother and daughter walked back and forth, waiting for any word, quiet, nervous.

There was something on the grass. Nellie thought it was something a dog might have left behind while playing.

Josephine saw the object more clearly. “No, Mom,” she said. “That’s a hand.”

Nellie was silent.
⁵⁹

He was heavily built, this rescuer, and tearing down broken walls was a strenuous, though not difficult, task. A hearty pull on a rope and bricks fell at his feet. He continued his work. Cocooned inside the wall were the corpses of two small boys.

He could not stop. Muscles heaving, like a mighty ox pulling a plow, the man put his weight into the work, bringing down crumpled wall after crumpled wall.

One stubborn section refused to budge. The man steadied himself, threw all of his being into the task, and finally the solid bricks gave way.

The fallen stone curtain revealed another boy, broken to pieces.
⁶⁰

Lloyd Curtis, a nineteen-year-old Lansing resident, was one of many volunteer ambulance drivers. For the better part of a day and a half he did what he had to, transporting some victims to hospitals, others to funeral homes.

He also helped pick up debris, bricks, wood, and parts of bodies torn from children’s frames. Pieces of skulls, fingers, legs, feet, and hands were tossed like rocks into five-gallon pails.

The grisly work stuck with Curtis for the rest of his life.
⁶¹

Governor Fred W. Green and his wife arrived shortly after one o’clock to survey the damage. It was an overwhelming sight to Green, who had been in office for just a few months. The devastation was beyond understanding, yet a leader couldn’t just wax eloquent and move on. He promised that there would be state aid in the coming days and weeks.

For now, though, more immediate help was needed. The governor rolled up his sleeves, climbed onto the rubble, and helped the rescuers remove bricks.
⁶²

Paul Lefke’s chemical trucks were dry after pumping two sixty-gallon tanks onto the second floor of the Kehoe farmhouse. Firefighters were told that this was where Nellie Kehoe normally slept; once the blaze was quelled they hoped to find her remains.

There was nothing to do but let the Kehoe farm burn. Efforts to quell the blaze were limited at best; there also was the danger of hidden dynamite in the farm buildings.

Periodically a crash—the sound of collapsing walls, a falling roof, bursting windows—echoed across the farmland.

When the inferno died down, entrance was still impossible. Embers, intensely hot and too dangerous to traverse, glowed for hours. They shimmered with a sinister red light seemingly stoked by hellfire.
⁶³

Come late afternoon there was still no word about Ralph. Nellie Cushman paced the sidewalk, unsuccessfully trying to make time move faster. Despite the warm spring day, Nellie felt a chill throughout her body. “I’m cold,” she said to Josephine. A woman who overheard Nellie offered the coat she was wearing.

Though grateful, Nellie was a little hesitant. “But maybe I can’t find you on the grounds again to give it back,” she told the woman.

“I’ll find you, I’m sure,” replied Nellie’s benefactor. “If I don’t, take the coat and go home. It’s all right.”
⁶⁴

C. E. Lamb, a local farmer who doubled as the county coroner, was drowning with work. Bodies at the Community Hall morgue were still unidentified. William Searl and Sheriff Fox helped Lamb with the gruesome job of identifying the corpses. Mattie Smith, another school official, painstakingly checked the school census in her hands, trying to account for every known child at Bath Consolidated. Her task took considerable time, patience, and withheld emotions. She had a job to complete; tears would come at a more appropriate time.
⁶⁵

Josephine and her mother continued their anxious sidewalk vigil. It was about four o’clock, an agonizingly long day.

A person came up to the pair. “You’re wanted at the Community Hall,” he said.
⁶⁶