Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (29 page)

There were two other burials, both held on Friday.

A Catholic service was held for Nellie Price Kehoe at the Lansing Resurrection
Church, presided over by Fr. John O’Rafferty. Two days before O’Rafferty had spoken at the Sparrow Hospital fund-raiser as the Bath disaster unfolded; now he delivered a funeral service for one of its most prominent victims. One hundred relatives and friends attended the memorial. On their way into the church, the mourners were confronted by a few newspaper photographers. Words were exchanged, and a scuffle nearly broke out between the grieving and the newsmen.

Throughout his sermon, Father O’Rafferty didn’t refer directly to the way Nellie’s life ended. Yet he closed his sermon with words of forgiveness, quoting a dying Jesus from Luke 23:24.

“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

Forgiveness was a hard accomplishment after the funeral. Having retreated from the church entrance, the news photographers now ensconced themselves across the street, poking their lenses from a second-story window overlooking the funeral procession. Friends of the Price family picked up the fight that had started before the service, storming the building and confronting the photographers.
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Nellie was laid to rest in the Price family plot at Lansing’s Mount Hope Cemetery. Her headstone reads “Ellen A. Price 1875–1927.”

Two hours before mass was said for Nellie Kehoe, the indistinct body parts of Andrew Kehoe were placed in a coffin, lowered into the ground, and covered with dirt. It was as anonymous as a burial could be.

Yet Kehoe’s interment was marked by careful organization, done with a certain sense of ritualism albeit without sanctity or prayers. One of his sisters, now living in Battle Creek, Michigan, purchased a casket. On Thursday afternoon, workmen dug several graves at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Saint Johns in a section normally reserved for indigents. (There was profound irony in Andrew and Nellie Kehoe’s final resting places both being named “Mount Hope Cemetery.”) Numerous holes were dug as a ruse to confuse would-be vigilantes eager to take revenge on Kehoe’s corpse.

Although there had been some talk of burying Kehoe in a family plot, his surviving relatives agreed that this anonymous internment was for the best. The pauper’s section of Mount Hope—like any other potter’s field—was stuck in an out-of-the-way corner. It looked like an afterthought in the graveyard, an area without much greenery or funerary monuments. The undertaker and a couple of grave diggers chose one of the holes, lowered the casket, and covered it with yellow-brown earth.

The other holes were filled in as well. Later, when he was asked to point out Kehoe’s grave, the cemetery’s sexton was at a loss.
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Although plans for Kehoe’s funeral weren’t made public, a pair of newspapermen managed to find out the time and place. They lurked across the street, shadowy figures seemingly stuck with an assignment no one in the newsroom cared to take on. One man left; the other stuck around for a few hours to see if anything might happen.

He wasn’t disappointed. After a time, two cars pulled into the potter’s field. No one exited either auto; the machines simply flanked the grave. The occupants included one of Kehoe’s sisters and his only brother plus a few old friends.

After a few moments, the machines pulled away. The business of disposing of Andrew P. Kehoe’s remains was over.
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Throughout the weekend ministers carefully prepared sermons, trying to find answers to agonizing questions within the comfort of scripture. In nearby Okemos, Rev. V. B. Niles announced that he would deliver a homily to his congregation titled “Tragedy’s Need.”
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Rev. Edwin Bishop, so personally involved through his fund-raising work with the governor, as well as serving as one of the many ministers on call for victims’ funerals, faced his congregation at Plymouth Congregational Church. He had spent many hours thinking through his emotional chasm.

The pastor looked deep into his faith for answers. Now it was time to share with his flock.

“In many a picture gallery in Europe,” he began, “there hangs an artist’s representation of the ‘Massacre of the Innocents.’ The gruesome portrayal of Herod’s brutal soldiers tearing little children from their agonized mothers’ arms and then putting them to the sword has been spread upon canvas. It is a pitiful picture, as it was a pitiful reality. And now we have had our own massacre of the innocents, right here in Michigan, in a peaceful country hamlet, on a beautiful May morning, in a building dedicated by the community to growing youth the perpetrator thereof being from that group supposed to represent the substantial backbone of our population. Like the wreck of the Titanic, the rending, crashing blow came from the unseen and the unsuspected.”

Through vivid language, Bishop relived the tragedy for his flock. “After 1900 years, in Bath, in Michigan, is repeating the experience of Bethlehem
in Judea—‘A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they were not.’ Because of all the circumstances, the Bath tragedy in our own neighborhood is likely to be known the world over as
sui generis.”

Throughout his sermon, Bishop seemed to be searching for answers to the big question of “why.” He looked at all aspects of Kehoe, considering nature versus nurture, criminal psychology, and what he termed “the hazards of modern civilization.” “[T]he nervous and mental strain of our high-speed living are all taking mortal toll,” he continued. “It is particularly uncertain today that when the family leaves the breakfast table in the morning they will all foregather again at night.”

Kehoe’s crimes were beyond reason, beyond any kind of normal explanation. “Would that a Nathaniel Hawthorne could write this case up!” he declared. Yet, he concluded, the unadulterated evil of one man’s deeds inevitably brought out the best of humanity. “Hate had its hour in Bath, but love followed quickly at hate’s heels,” he told the congregation.
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With three children vanquished and a fourth critically injured, Eugene Hart and his wife held the dubious distinction of being the family suffering the deepest losses. It was a loss in which words of comfort were useless.

Yet from somewhere deep inside, the Harts found words of appreciation, which they published in a small and eloquent ad taken out in the “Announcements” section of the local newspaper. “We desire to express our heart-felt thanks to our many friends and neighbors, to our governor and Mrs. Green, to all women societies, to the doctors and nurses and the Red Cross, to our police of Lansing and state, to our business men of Lansing, and all neighboring cities and towns, to unknown friends and sympathizers in other states and cities, in general to all nearby and far who aided and comforted us in this, the dark hour of our lives. Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Hart, Bath, Michigan.”
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The Bauerle family also placed a notice thanking their many friends and “any more unknown to us who cared for our ‘Dear Arnold’ during his last moments of suffering.”
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On Wednesday, during their chance meeting on the street, Kehoe had told Albert Detluff that the next school board meeting was scheduled for Friday, May 20. So it was.

They came to the Community Hall, the trustees, faces drawn and weary. Some of their children were dead; some of their children were injured. All had friends suffering devastating losses.

Newsmen filled the room. There was a dark anticipation in the air. Surely something had to be said about the bombing. It certainly would make for good copy. William Searl was there, too, a somber figure with heavy duties.
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The meeting’s minutes, handwritten in a simple ledger, are starkly bureaucratic. All business, there is nothing in the report that reflects the tragedy. “Meeting called to order by the president of the board,” it reads. “Officers present G. Morris G. O. Spangler A. Detluff and M. W. Kyes.”

The next line states that the minutes of the last meeting, held on May 2, were read. The first item on the record was a motion to advance Detluff, the board’s purchasing agent, twenty-five dollars to pay a small bill.

The motion, which carried, was made by “A. P. Kehoe.”
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The next piece of business was the appointment of a new treasurer. An offer made to J. W. Webster, a longtime board member, was respectfully declined. It was understandable. Webster was a chicken farmer and shock waves from the blast had destroyed the twenty-four thousand eggs in his incubators.
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Another name came up: former school board treasurer Enos Peacock, the man Kehoe defeated in the 1924 elections. Peacock was telephoned with the offer. He agreed to take the position. Someone drove through the sightseeing hordes, picked Peacock up, and returned to the meeting so the new treasurer could be officially sworn in.

None of this is reflected in the minutes, which read simply, “Moved by M. W. Kyes Enos Peacock be appointed teasuer [
sic
] of School carried.”
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Searl administered the oath of office, and the board moved to other issues. Was the board liable for the losses—both life and property—incurred in the bombing? It was suggested that the Michigan attorney general’s office be consulted; ultimately it was decided to wait for the results of the pending inquest.

Funding the rebuilding of the school was another concern. Money was tight. It was noted that the ledgers for May listed nearly $3,300.00 in debits and $128.04 in the treasury. Nearly $40,000.00 in bonds were still owed on the school building. Unless there was considerable help from the state or other sources, a dire financial crisis loomed over the school board.
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They turned to the question of replacing the devastated property. Should the school be rebuilt on the same site? Perhaps the building should be razed, the land turned into a memorial park, and a new school be built elsewhere. Nothing, of course, could be decided at the moment.
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It would take years of healing and a new generation of board members to answer these questions.

A new superintendent, Harry Brandt, was approved as Huyck’s replacement, an appointment steeped in irony. Brandt’s official hiring was mere formality. Having decided to move on in his career, Huyck had earlier submitted his resignation. Surely Kehoe must have been aware of this development.
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Another administrative hiring was approved: Frank Ray would be the new principal. Like Huyck, Floyd Huggett had previously resigned from his job. These two administrative changes were expected.

Hiring replacement teachers for the late Blanche Harte and Hazel Weatherby would have to wait.
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Detluff moved that the meeting be adjourned. The motion carried.
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With their official monthly duties completed, the trustees departed into the night.