While the mass murder at Virginia Tech stands as a new murder record for a public school shooting, a much older record still thankfully stands.
The worst mass murder to ever take place at a U.S. school was the work of Andrew Kehoe, who, in 1927, planted hundreds of pounds of dynamite under the brand new school building in Bath, Michigan, and once it was filled with hundreds of students, he blew it up.
Dozens were killed and maimed, and the village has never been the same. (Photo from the Lowell Sun, via Newspaperarchive.com.)
Andrew Kehoe was a trustee of the school. Profoundly mentally ill, furious about the increase in property taxes the new building engendered for him, and having recently received a foreclosure notice on his farm, he began the day on May 18 by beating his wife Nellie to death. He dumped her body into a wheelbarrow, piled their silverware and money next to her, and set the farm on fire.
While firefighters responded to the blaze at his farmstead, he drove a mile to the new school building to touch off the dynamite.
Witnesses said the building was lifted four feet off its foundation, the walls caved outward, and the roof collapsed. The bodies of children were blown out the windows. A silent pause was followed by unending screams. Women came running from every direction. But Kehoe was not finished.
The madman pulled his car up close to the school, approached the superintendent and exchanged words, and then Kehoe blew up his car. Both men were killed, and the town's postmaster, standing nearby, had his legs blown off.
The town residents climbed at once into the wreckage of the building to save those they could. One of the first men on the scene, Robert Gates, told an Associated Press reporter: "In no time more than one hundred men were at work tearing away the debris of the school, and nearly as many women were frantically pawing over the timber and broken bricks for trace of their children. I saw more than one woman lift clusters of bricks held together by mortar heavier than the average man would think of handling without a crowbar."
The entire state was plunged into anguish. From the wire services report that went out to newspapers across the country the next day:
News of the tragedy spread rapidly through the state of Michigan. By the time frantic parents and friends had reclaimed the last of the broken forms of the victims late yesterday a solid line of automobiles stretching literally for miles along every road leading into the town choked every higway.
The disaster was national news for a very brief time, and until the Columbine disaster took place, seems to have been little known outside Michigan. It is not mentioned in very many crime encyclopedias and often escapes the attention of journalists, who continue to this day to demonstrate that they are not familiar with the tragedy that brought unparalleled heartbreak to this small village in central Michigan.
The final death toll, including the Kehoes, was 45. A record that will hopefully stand for all time.
For more: Wikipedia on the Bath School Disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
Butcher's Dozen by Larry Wakefield
The Bath School Disaster by Gene Wilkins
What this proves is that there is truly no way to protect oneself from those few who go beserk and that time has a way of smoothing out our memories. Certainly something like this should have been remembered. But with distance, the horror seems to lessen. I know that someday in the not-so-distant future that even the Twin Tower memorial will become a curious oddity. Will people two generations from now find it significant? Or will it merely be a footnote when history books try to explain the American invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s?
Posted by: Jeri Westerson | April 19, 2007 at 10:16 AM
Even in Mid-Michigan, the Bath School Disaster is little remembered. Growing up there, in the 50's and 60's, we had never heard about it, though many of our parents certainly remembered it-- and there were survivors and surviving family members still living in the area.
In those days, the schools in the area were subject to periodic, anonymous bomb threats, and we were all familiar with the evacuation routine, though we had no idea why the threats evoked such fear.
I think that, though it is never mentioned, the press do know of the Bath Disaster, and they acknowledged in both the Columbine Massacre and the Virginia Tech shootings with the qualifier, "largest gun-related school tragedy"
Posted by: t boucher | April 25, 2007 at 05:00 PM