Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (37 page)

“I thought [the project] was going to be dumb,” one student wrote when it was complete. Rather, she found new ideas within herself. “I learned more than just how to play with clay but how to deal with the sad stuff.”
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The Kehoe property changed hands a few times, though sometimes it was difficult to sell the land. Stories persisted through the years that somewhere beneath the soil Kehoe had buried secret dynamite caches. Few people wanted to chance stumbling on this potentially deadly inheritance.
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Beneath the area where the farmhouse once stood there ran a natural waterway some seven feet below the surface. When Neil Curtis, who acquired the land in the late 1990s, decided to access this resource he
hired a contractor to do the digging. Curtis watched the process standing a half mile from what could be ground zero. No unexploded dynamite surfaced.

Curtis sometimes found old bricks, the remnants of Kehoe’s three-story home, studding his fields. He dumped the useless relics unceremoniously into a ditch along Clark Road.
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Elton McConnell, a former Michigander, who retired to Oregon, often told stories about what he saw on May 18. In 1927 he was a mechanic at the State Garage, an automobile repair shop for government employees. On that morning, he heard an explosion in the distance, went outside, and could see a pillar of smoke rising in the northeast. When the news broke, he raced to Bath; he had relatives who attended the school, and McConnell wanted to do what he could. He always described the scene as “a bloody mess.”

Over the years McConnell would tell others how he remembered Kehoe driving up. There was a look of ghastly horror on the man’s face. Next, McConnell recalled, Kehoe said something like, “Oh my God, it was supposed to go off last night!” In this scenario, Kehoe would have blown up the school during a Parent-Teacher Association meeting held on the night of May 17.
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His memories echo those of Sidney J. Howell, who seemingly martyred himself defending Kehoe. Although Kehoe surely intended the explosion to unfold almost exactly as it did, there is no surprise in false memories like McConnell’s or Kehoe defenders like Sydney Howell. Despite the bombing of the Bath Consolidated School; despite Brenda Ann Spencer picking off students with her rifle at the Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego on January 29, 1979 (her reasoning, “I don’t like Mondays,” inspired a popular song by the Irish rock group The Boom-town Rats); despite Patrick Purdy’s murder-suicide, killing five children and himself on January 17, 1989, at an elementary school—also named Cleveland—in Stockton, California; despite Laurie Dann’s mad day on May 20, 1988 (71 years and 2 days after Kehoe’s bombing), when she sent poisoned beverages to several Northwestern University fraternity houses, set off an incendiary device at one suburban Chicago elementary school, then stormed another where she killed one child, wounded several others, fled, forced her way into a nearby home, took refuge in an upstairs bedroom, stuck a gun in her mouth and fired; despite Barry

Loukaitis’s murders on February 2, 1996, at the Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake, Washington, where, clad in gunslinger garb and outfitted with two handguns, a rifle, and eighty rounds of ammunition, Loukaitis blasted away two children and a teacher; despite the April 20, 1999, rampage of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who, armed with an Intratec TEC-DC9, a Hi-Point 995 carbine, a Savage 67H pump-action shotgun, and a Stevens 311D double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, went on a bloody rampage, exploding one crude bomb (other explosive devices failed to go off) and shooting round after round at their high school in Columbine, Colorado, killing twelve students, one teacher and then each other; despite other such massacres throughout the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and several Asian countries, it’s hard to imagine human beings committing mass murder within the haven of a school, a place where children are supposed to be safe from harm.
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What little exists of Andrew and Nellie Kehoe’s earthly goods gather dust in the Michigan Historical Museum: Kehoe’s broken and battered watch, his driver’s license, and Nellie’s silverware. The remains of his truck were donated to a scrap drive during World War II.
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Kehoe’s burial site remains unmarked but not alone. It is no small irony that years after his suicide, a child was buried next to Andrew Kehoe’s grave.
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Bath, Michigan. Friday May 18, 2007

The morning of May 18 was clean and clear, sun shining bright. A perfect spring day in Michigan.

Eighty years had passed since the day of destruction. Today Bath radiated normalcy, everyday routines of the small-town Midwest. Morning went by, as so many do, turning into a beautiful afternoon. Kids ached from sitting at their school desks. It was too nice a day to be inside.

Couzens Park was quiet but not without a certain ambience. Subtle memorials were brought to the greens, as remembrances of the 1927 devastation and death. Strewn here and there across the park were single flowers, a colorful tribute to young lives forever stilled. A cluster of flowers gently blanketed the brick pathway of names around the cupola.

All through the day a smattering of people came to the park to pay their respects and bear witness. Parents with children—many the ages of
bombing victims—showed a new generation the memorials and retold the story.

That afternoon Nancy Welch Spagnulo, a longtime Bath resident, came to the cupola with a homemade wreath. She wasn’t an old-timer in town. Her family had only been there since 1950, a relatively short span in the deeply rooted generations of townspeople. Yet the bombing was as close to her as anyone who’d grown up in Bath, a presence that was always near. Attending the old Couzens Agricultural School was a strange experience for her; she always felt as though she was awash in memory. Her family’s house also carried a reminder of the day. Built in 1910, the home bore a crack at the top, unrepaired since it was ripped asunder eighty years before.

Spagnulo’s wreath was decorated with herbs and flowers. Mint was for innocence. Rosemary for remembrance. And pansies for the children.
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The wreath was carefully hung on the front of the cupola.

Over on Clark Road, the land that had once been the Kehoe farm was also quiet. The wind blew lightly across freshly plowed fields.

In the sky a lone hawk swooped through the air, scouting for prey. It rose swiftly, then dropped into a sudden dive. The hawk seemed to hover for a moment, then changed course and disappeared into the woods on the edge of the land.

Josephine Cushman Vail was a little disappointed that morning. Mother’s Day had just passed, and florists throughout the county were fresh out of red tulips. She made do with the best substitute she could find, a bouquet of orange roses.

Her granddaughter, Heather Chadwick, picked Josephine up for the drive to Pleasant Hill Cemetery. Not much was said along the way; Josephine was lost in her thoughts. The week had been a little hectic in Bath, what with newspapers and television stations coming in and out for a quick story on the eightieth anniversary. In the wake of Virginia Tech, it seemed the story had more relevance to readers and viewers this year.

Josephine was worried of late. Just shy of ninety-four, she was still a feisty woman in love with life and all it had given her. She had been making this annual May pilgrimage for decades. Josephine knew that it
would eventually come to an end. Would Ralphie always get his red tulips?
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Don’t worry, Heather assured her. Bringing Ralph tulips every May 18 was a deeply ingrained family tradition, one that would continue for years to come. He’s part of me, part of my family, she told her grandmother.

Heather turned the car into the cemetery, slowly driving to the Cushman family plot. She helped her grandmother from the car for the short walk to Ralph’s resting place.
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Slowly, with purpose, Josephine knelt by the headstone. “Ralphie, I’m here again,” she whispered. She placed the roses next to his grave. For a moment, it was just the two of them. Josephine murmured a few words, an intimacy shared between sister and brother. She kissed her fingertips lightly, then touched them to Ralph’s name.
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Overhead, the sweet song of spring birds drifted in the air.