Funeral Dirges Sound As Echo Of Maniac's Revenge

Children Who Escaped Blast Carry Former Playmates To Graves Near Bath.

By Margrete Daney Of the Blade Staff.
         
Bath, Mich., May 21 - A sighing breeze rustling through the trees Friday 
afternoon played a soft requiem as funeral services for 10 victims of the 
Bath Consolidated school explosion, which claimed nearly 50 victims Wednesday, 
were held in the little town or its nearby country-side.

In Pleasant Hill cemetery, one mile out of the town, Sexton William DeVinney 
and an extra crew of workers, were digging graves for 17 victims - graves that 
will be filled with the bodies of little school children before the week closes.

Truly the town of Bath today is a town of death.

People walk softly past the dynamited schoolhouse and talk in whispers.  Mothers
of children who had escaped death stand beside the wrecked schoolhouse and pray in
sobbing voices for the little ones who had passed on and others in the hospitals.

On nearly every door in the town is a wreath.  On the front of Eugene Hart's home
just across from thc school are three wreaths - flowers of tragedy that denote 
the loss of his daughters, Lola, 12, Vivian, 9, and his son, Percy, 11.
Another son is seriously ill in a Lansing hospital.

Funeral to be Sunday.

Services for the three Hart children will be held Sunday.

Earl Ewing, 11, son of Simeon Ewing, acting mayor of Bath, and Thelma McDonald, 
daughter of the local minister, were among the first victims buried Friday.

School chums acted as pallbearers for the Ewing boy.  
Flowers from his classmates covered the casket.

Hospital authorities in Lansing fear the number of deaths will be swelled to 50.
Several young patients in St. Lawrence and Edward W. Sparrow hospital are in 
critical conditions.
         
Children Discuss Blast.

Some of the youngsters are recuperating, and talking over their experiences.  
With arms and legs in bandages and casts, they relate to each other how the 
explosion "felt" to them.  

Marian Eschtruch, 11, fifth grade pupil, who is a patient in St. Lawrence
hospital, says the explosion was just like a dream.  She was under the debris 
for several hours before rescued.  Her injuries are not serious.

"I never heard a thing", she says.  "I thought I fell to sleep.  Then some time
after I awakened, there were piles of things on top of me.  I screamed and 
men began digging for me.  Finally they brought me out."

Nurses interrupt the conversation to warn the youthful patients 
they mustn't talk about their experiences.

Little Minds Wonder.

But [it's] hard to keep little minds from wondering why all this happened.  
[It's] difficult to assure little boys and girls that they [mustn't] speak about
their bruised faces and cut bodies - that everything is going to be all right.

Thousands of visitors filled the highways, crowded the school grounds 
and the farm of Andrew Kehoe, super-killer, Friday and Satuday.

So vast was the crowd that state and county police were used for traffic duty.
One-way streets were made of dusty country roads, and only press or police cards
allowed one to pass those officers.

At the school a few Bath citizens willingly point out the huge grease 
or oil spot where Kehoe's car stood when it was dynamited.  They point with awe
to the automobile fender that was blown to the top of a tall poplar tree on the 
school grounds.  They even show you a shoe they say belonged to the murderer 
of little school children.

Clover Field Trampled.

Through a field of thick clover a path several feet wide has been worn 
by those who wish to see the place where parts of Kehoe's body [were] found.

Fearing that the super-maniac may have planted other dynamite with time clocks,
county officials have had every house, building, store and barn searched thoroughly.
One even walks gingerly along the streets and carefully avoids all stray wires,
fearing they may have been connected with explosives by Kehoe before his own death.

Next to the school the Kehoe farm attracts the interest of thousands. 
The funeral pyre where the burned body of Mrs. Nellie Kehoe was found still stands.

Hundreds of amateur photographers took snapshots of the gruesome sights 
to carry home to friends.

Cruel to Animals.

Neighbors recall the cruelty of Kehoe to his farm animals.  With the bodies 
of two horses that burned to death in sight, they tell of the time he clubbed 
a horse to death in its harness because it couldn't obey his commands.

Both Kehoe and his murdered wife were buried Friday.  Kehoe was buried 
in a cemetery in St. [Johns].  Only the undertaker and a few grave diggers 
were present.  There was no ceremony, no minister, no mourner.

Services for Mrs. Kehoe, whom Kehoe butally killed before his wholesale murder 
at the school, were held Friday in a local Catholic church.  Burial was in 
Mt. Hope cemetery.

All victims of the blast will be buried over the week-end.  In many instances 
joint services will be held for little boys and girls who were pals in school 
and who met death together.

Slaughter on All Sides.

The appalling wholesale slaughter confronts the visitor on every side.  One stops
at a farm house to ask the way to a cemetery.  A woman with tear filled eyes answers
"just down the road a way.  There's where I'm burying [my] two children tomorrow."

In the hospitals the little boys and girls who are well enough to think, are asking what
happened to their grade cards they were to receive Monday morning.  Some are sure they
passed.  But they are not sure when they will again have a school to attend.

Teachers and pupils walk sadly about the wrecked building, seemingly at loss 
to understand the tragedy.  Funeral services for the following were held Friday:
Lucille and Elizabeth Wichell at Rose church, Bath; Elsie Robb in DeWitt Methodist
church; Galen Hart, in Bath; Arnold Bauerle, DeWitt church; Russell Chapman, Bath.

Funerals Saturday.

Among the funeral services arranged for Saturday are: Marjory Fritz, Lansing;
Glenn Smith, Bath Methodist church; Clarence McFarren, Bath; Robert Hart, Bath;
Ralph Cushman, Bath; George and Willa Hall, Lansing.

County officials say they are certain Kehoe had no accomplice.  Although the 
state attorney general will come here for the inquest Monday, officials say 
there will be no one to prosecute.  The murderer of juvenile Bath already has 
received his punishment.