Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (7 page)

Fig. 2. Andrew and Nellie Kehoe.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

Kehoe became a regular fixture at local farm bureaus, organizations where farmers met to discuss techniques, economics, and other issues related to their lives and work. He fast became a respected individual known for his quick mind, expertise in modern technology, and growing interest in local affairs, someone who eagerly volunteered his time and was a stalwart voice at bureaus and granges throughout the region. It seemed the influence of Philip Kehoe was finally manifesting itself in his son.
⁹

By all appearances, Nellie had done well. Her husband was a good man with a few personality quirks but otherwise had a great passion for life and helping others.

Yet there were moments that revealed a darker edge to Andrew Kehoe. David Harte discovered this early on. The Hartes, like many farm
families, let their dogs have the run of their land. One of the family pets, a terrier, enjoyed scampering in the front yard where the Harte home faced the Kehoe residence. After a hard day of yipping and yapping, the dog usually came home. But in March of 1920, nearly a year after the Kehoes moved to Bath, the terrier went missing.

Various stories were told about what happened to the dog. According to one account, Kehoe claimed he shot the dog accidentally.
¹⁰
Another had Lulu asking Kehoe if he had seen the dog. Yes, he told her, the terrier was burying a bone along the fence on Kehoe’s property and he shot the damned nuisance.
¹¹
A third story had Lulu coming back from a trip to Lansing with Nellie. The dog was poisoned, and Lulu knew in her heart that Kehoe had killed it.
¹²

Regardless of how it died, it is a given that Kehoe killed the dog. There was no dustup over the incident. Kehoe and Harte still spoke as neighbors and farmers, often helping one another thresh their crops.

Lulu Harte, however, no longer offered Nellie Kehoe rides to Lansing.
¹³

In general terms, farming was man’s work; boys consequently learned from their fathers how to work the land. Girls, as expected, were taught the basics of keeping house from their mothers and grandmothers.

But standard subjects—reading, writing, arithmetic—were better served by an organized system, no matter how rudimentary or sparse that education might be. In 1840 Bath’s first schoolhouse, a one-room log cabin, was built by Peter Finch, whose wife was trained as a teacher. Records indicate that between seven to ten children—the majority of them girls—attended. Though confined to one room, the school was a cozy building complete with a good-sized fireplace to keep students warm during the winter months.
¹

The facility was a successful venture until the arrival of a traveling minister come to spread the Gospel in the wilderness. As a welcoming gesture, some of the schoolboys lit the fireplace. The blaze was warm, comforting, and too big. Flames jumped from the fireplace to the walls and ceiling, burning the schoolhouse to the ground.
²

Perhaps this was a dream come true for the children, but parents didn’t let education stop. Another log schoolhouse was built, and learning resumed.

A system of small schools ensued over the years. Often these spaces doubled as houses of worship for various denominations. The schools were usually identified by numbers, although a few acquired nicknames such as the Rose School (also known as Old Red) and the Peacock School. Buildings ranged from log cabins to more elaborate wooden frame buildings. Teachers, as was the custom of the day, were hired on a year-to-year basis. In 1856, one woman hired to teach six days a week made thirty-three cents a day for her work. Some schools were funded by government grants, with construction a community effort.
³

Typically most children completed school at the tenth-grade level. At their peak in the early twentieth century, ten small schoolhouses—some one-room and others multi-grade facilities—served Bath and the surrounding region.
⁴

As the community grew, so did the need for a more organized and centrally located facility. A new idea was floated: consolidate all the small schools in one large building and extend educational opportunity through the twelfth grade.

Such change does not come without opposition, and this radical move had its detractors. The idea of consolidation raised numerous challenges that many people felt were insurmountable. How could nearly three hundred children be transported from home to school? Who would feed them lunch? Where would the teachers come from? What body would oversee the new school?

And most important—in some eyes—who was going to pay for all this?

A meeting was held on July 22, 1921. A high-ranking state official was brought in to make the case for consolidation. An official vote was held three days later. The referendum passed. Now came the hard work.
⁵

By mid-August a school board was up and running and the hunt for a central location was under way. A hill near downtown Bath provided an ideal spot. The new school would be a shining landmark overlooking the town, symbolically representing a higher ideal and bright future.
⁶

“A consolidated school is expensive in a small community,” wrote Monty Ellsworth, a local resident, a few years later in his chronicle of the Kehoe bombing. “But there are a great many other things to look at. The children don’t have to wade through the snow and mud, they are picked up at the door. A great many people appreciate not having their children playing along the road with rough children and standing a chance of being attacked by some lawless ruffian. The parents can feel that their children
are safe from the time they leave the door to the time they are brought back, the bus drivers being selected from the most responsible men of the community who make application. . . . The consolidated school is a help in a great many ways; the children have the same classmates up to the time they graduate. In the rural schools they work along until they pass the eighth grade and then go into a strange school. In some cases they are large for their age and this causes them a handicap. . . . Teacher have to be farther advanced to teach in a consolidated school than they do in a common country school. . . . [W]hen everything is taken into consideration, the consolidated school is the cheapest and best way of education.”
⁷

A former school building in Bath that had housed grades one through ten was salvageable and could be moved to the new location. This, it was decided, could form the basis of the new building. Classrooms for the elementary grades would meet on the first floor with high school students taking the second story.
⁸

On November 12, 1921, a vote was held on a bond proposal to fund the new school. Out of seventy-six votes, only twenty people opposed the plan. With the new school came a bond for $43,000.
⁹
Eight thousand dollars already raised by the school board would pay for the athletic fields and lighting plants; the additional $35,000 would come from property taxes at the rate of $12.26 per $1,000 of property valuation.
¹⁰

Architects and builders were engaged. Work began. Gradually a building rose. Anticipation grew.

Next was the human element.

Emory E. Huyck was born on July 3, 1894, on a small farm outside Butternut, Michigan, one of the eleven children of Mr. and Mrs. William Huyck. After completing high school, Huyck attended the Ferris Institute, a small college in Big Rapids, Michigan. Like so many young men of his generation, he volunteered for military service when the United States entered the Great War. He served as a training officer at Camp Custer in Augusta, Michigan, teaching English-language skills to raw-boned recruits.
¹¹
After his discharge from the army, Huyck returned to school for his bachelor’s degree. He majored in agricultural studies at Michigan State College and while still a student married Ethel Huyck, a schoolteacher by profession.
¹²

Between his agricultural degree and his work as a military educator, Huyck was considered ideal for his new job of superintendent of the
Bath Consolidated School. He was young, talented, and showed great potential. He could do double duty as an administrator and teacher. Best of all, since he was barely out of school himself Huyck’s initial salary could be set relatively low for a man in his position.
¹³

Fig. 3. The newly built Bath Consolidated School.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

Teachers were hired. Arrangements were made for their housing with separate facilities for women and men.
¹⁴

Transportation was another issue. In the one-room schoolhouse era, students simply walked to school. A consolidated facility required more sophisticated means of travel. Six motor-driven vehicles were initially acquired, five of which were standard buses. The sixth was a Model T Ford fitted with a detachable body. In fall, winter, and spring, children were transported to and from school in this machine; in summer the body was removed and the Model T used for farm work.
¹⁵
A seventh bus was a horse-drawn wagon equipped with a potbellied stove so passengers could stay warm during cold Michigan winters.
¹⁶

When the school opened in fall 1922 with 236 students, it ushered in
a new era for the community.
¹⁷
Modern education had come to Bath. The 1920s promised to be a time of beneficent growth.

Perhaps Mark Twain put it best when he wrote in
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.”

The new trustees wanted things plain and simple: administration of the school was their responsibility; oversight of teaching went to Huyck. On the surface it seemed like a good idea. The majority of school board members had previous experience running the one-room schoolhouse districts. But the consolidated school offered different challenges.