The Bath School Disaster

With all due respect and sympathy to the victims and their families of the Columbine, McDonald's, and Virginia Tech shootings, the Oklahoma bombing, and other mass murders, they were not the worst mass murders of children in the US.

On May 18, 1927, 45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew Kehoe dynamited the new school building in Bath, Michigan out of revenge over his foreclosed farm due in part to the taxes required to pay for the new school.

Contents of this page:

Dedication:
To my Great-uncle Arnold Victor Bauerle, who died in the explosion at the age of 8. Thanks to Kehoe, the following excerpt from "The Bath School Disaster" by M.J. Ellsworth is all there is to remember him by, other than a picture of him with his brother and sister, his gravestone, a commemorative brick, and a memorial ornament at the Bath School Museum:

Arnold Victor Bauerle, born in Dewitt township, February 15, 1919, 
was in the third grade.  Even at that age he had a great head for figures.
He asked to be given numbers which often ran into the millions.

His father often told him he would never be a farmer because he ate so slow.

He was always busy at something.  If not in school, he was playing baseball.

Arnold wanted to go to Lansing with his parents on the day he was killed, 
but he had had whooping cough and had been out of school so much that they 
thought he ought not stay out of school any more.  They were in Lansing at the 
time of the blast at the school.

He is survived by his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Bauerle, 
one brother and one sister.

Interment was in the Dewitt cemetery. 

Details:
Good write-ups are at Wikipedia, Useless Info (!?), and crimelibrary.com, though the first part of the latter is pure sensationalistic speculation on Kehoe's thoughts the day of the disaster. Other links are on the St. John's, MI Independent BSD page. See also these articles from the Detroit Free Press, Associated Press, USA Today, Education Week, the Seattle Times, the Daily Camera, the Holland Sentinel, Robert Lyons' BSD page, and this page. The following Detroit News link existed in August 2000 when this page was first created, but is now dead and irretrievable via the Internet Wayback Machine A good summary is "Just Another Summer Day: The Bath School Disaster" by Debra Pawlak, and a very brief one is at the bathmi.com page. A video report includes newsreel footage, but has poor audio Also, the second video link doesn't work - use this one instead. The Lansing State Journal commented in 2005 and after the VA Tech shootings.

An interview with a former Michigan police officer, now living in Ventura County, California, was apparently published in the 1/16/00 Ventura County Star, and has been moved here (it was lost for a while). An account from a survivor in the Detroit News is here, though the bit about the generator doesn't really make sense. Another account by another survivor is here, and yet another survivor's account is here. An article written from a post- 9/11 viewpoint is here, though I don't know that I agree with calling Kehoe a "suicide bomber"... I also didn't know there have been bomb scares around the anniversary - I don't remember any while I was there from 1965-1977...

Ironically if not for Columbine, most of the above links probably wouldn't exist. Lindbergh's flight occurred a few days later and pushed it out of the papers and nearly out of history.

A list of the victims is here; see also "The Bath School Disaster" under Contemporary Accounts below for similar lists, their biographies, and their photographs. The text of the historical marker placed on the site is here, and a description of the Bath School Museum is here. Graves of the victims are being compiled here.

The 75th anniversary prompted this column by Jerry Harte (whose father was born after his brother was killed in the disaster), articles in the Lansing State Journal and St. Johns Independent, and local stations WLNS and WILX, and some observations by Ken Black.

The 80th anniversary prompted reports by the Detroit News (note that the picture of Kehoe is an inaccurate sketch made afterwards), Lansing State Journal, and a Saginaw, MI radio station (the video includes newsreel footage).

Contemporary accounts:
New York Times

May 26, 1927: "Bath Victims Buried Friday". Note the "his last moments of suffering" comment that implies Arnold didn't die in the explosion itself, but lived for a while afterward, yet died before his family could reach him

June 2, 1927: "Report Bath Relief Work" This gets a bit long and dry at times; the bit about the Red Cross not being an insurance company must've changed between then and 9/11/01, given the money problems the latter event generated

Pictures (most taken from "The Bath School Disaster", link names starting with "tb" are from the Toledo Blade):
The school

Nurses giving first aid, and Red Cross workers in charge of relief. It's both nice to know they're still around 75 years later, and sad to realize they're still needed, especially after recent events .

"Raggedy Ann Survives, Little Mother Dies" "This Raggedy Ann doll, found in the school wreckage, brought sad memories to one Bath home. Raggedy Ann was paying her first visit to school, chaperoned by a kindergarten child who had begged her parents' permission to take Raggedy Ann to school. Searchers found Raggedy Ann near the body of the little kindergartner." Pictures like this always get to me; I almost lost it in the library when I saw it, and it was this picture that convinced me to copy off the Toledo Blade info

The historical marker and memorial boulder, and cupola now at the site used to be pictured here and here, but those links are now dead too A nice site with a new set of them is here. Ken Black provided these pictures of the dedication of the park and historical marker.

Bath School Museum exhibits #1, and #2 (courtesy Ron Bauerle). One has an excerpt from a newspaper article mentioning a witness who saw Supt. Huyck's "face freeze in horror" while he was talking to Kehoe just before the latter blew them up

Personal Observations
One of my grandmother's cousins who lives several miles away on the other side of US 27, told me they heard the explosion all the way over there, and that afterwards children would pray or make statements along the lines of "I love everybody in the world, except Kehoe".

It is unclear why all the dynamite didn't go off; theories range from the wiring being incomplete, wrong, disconnected by a janitor or the force of the first explosion, to the battery used to set it off didn't have enough capacity.

At the risk of being morbid, I'm curious as to what happened to the alarm clock used to set off the explosion, and the "criminals are made, not born" sign Kehoe left at his farm. I hope they weren't destroyed out of grief/anger, or scavenged by some souvenir hunter, or buried in some police evidence file and later destroyed... Update 3/4/02: the following is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Bath Township historian Gene Wilkins:

The girl with a cat statue - I remember seeing it in the rebuilt Junior High School and later in the new high school while I attended both. There was a rumor that it was made from the pennies contributed by the children of Michigan for it (and the article "Cast in Stone" repeats it), but I find this hard to believe. Likewise, the same article's interpretation of the child's hair/dress being "blown as if by the force of the explosion" and the "grief in her face" don't agree with other interpretations of it as conveying no reminder of the disaster, but simply portraying a carefree child as a memorial to what their lives should have been. You can check out this picture and judge for yourself.

While I was attending the rebuilt Junior High School in the early 1970s, one day there was a rumor that there was still some unexploded dynamite in the school and we had to evacuate it (after nearly 50 years? And I thought the entire old school was razed to make way for the new one?). No dynamite was found, but a structural inspection supposedly revealed that the school was unsafe, and was thus closed. We junior high school students had to share the high school building until a new school could be built (which became the high school, and the old high school became the junior high school); I remember getting up around 5 AM to catch the bus at 6 AM for my shift at the school. I graduated from the new high school in 1977, the same year the class of 1927 had their graduation since they didn't get to have one in 1927. I was disappointed when several years later it was decided to tear down the old school entirely.

While the people of Bath do not dwell on this tragedy, neither should it be forgotten. A friend and fellow classmate (whose family still lives in Bath) has an even stronger opinion:

Poems written afterwards:

The Last Bell

(written and published in memory of those who lost their lives in the Bath school disaster)

By Mrs. W.H. Blount, Hillman, Mich.  Published 5/25/1939, paper unknown.

"Mother, there's the school bell ringing
 I believe our clock is slow."
 And the mother sighed and answered,
"Yes, it's time for you to go."
 Down the path across the foot-bridge,
 Where the yellow cowslips grew,
"Ah! The purple Johnny Jump-Ups,
 For my teacher, just a few."

 Mother watched her treasured darling,
 Till he passed the signboard "Slow",
 And the big bell in the belfry 
 Still was swinging, to and fro.
 Heavy is her heart this morning,
 Like a pall, fear o'er her hung,
 And her tasks are still unfinished,
 And her song is yet unsung.

 Up the steps, soon all are seated.
 One, to teacher "posies" bring,
 When a little hand is lifted,
"Teacher, won't you let us sing?"
 And the teacher smiled and nodded,
"What will your selection be?"
"Oh! it's 'Jewels in the Knapsack'
 And it's on page fifty-three."

"When He Cometh", sang the children,
 And the teacher looking down
 On their happy upturned faces,
 Wreathed in locks of gold or brown,
 Or the one whose flaxen ringlets
'Gainst the "midnight" tresses shone,
 Thought, what jewels for a Saviour,
 They His loved ones and His own.

"Like the stars", the chorus swelling,
 Laughing faces, not one frown;
 They shall shine in saint-like beauty,
 Dazzling bright gems for His crown.
"He will gather" white robed angels,
 Bore them on their wings of love,
 To the Father, who was waiting
 In that Blessed Home Above.

 Forty children and their teachers,
 Knelt before the Saviour King.
 In His loving arms He clasped them,
 As the Last Bell ceased to ring.

The title song from the album Bath, Michigan by Landis MacKellar of Vienna

bath, michigan

in nineteen hundred and twenty eight
disturbed by an increase in the property tax rate
andrew kehoe, a deranged man,
blew up the school in bath, michigan
(in bath, michigan)

fifty children, give or take a few
and their teachers died when it blew
fifty pounds of dynamite
he hid in the basement, kehoe had a right
to buy that dynamite (for on farm use)

just before this deadly deed
he strangled his wife and girdled his trees
slaughtered his stock, burned the house down,
put a second bomb in his car and headed into town
he headed into town (ten miles away)

drove up to the school just after the first bomb went off
people running round like chickens with their heads cut off
beckoned the school board president over to his model-A ford
flipped a switch and killed four or five more
he killed four or five more (and wounded many with the shrapnel)

george marks, the postman, who lost a leg but survived
was the last to see andrew kehoe alive
just before he died, george marks would say
kehoe smiled, and i won't forget that smile 'til my dying day

it didn't begin with people out of work
vietnam veterans and post office clerks 
it began for no reason worth trying to understand
in nineteen twenty eight in bath, michigan
it began in bath, michigan.

Comment by Landis MacKellar: In 1993, I was involved in writing a book on the Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray murder case in New York City. As part of my research, I read all the newspapers for 1927-28 and learned of the events described here. Prior to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Bath, Michigan incident, now universally forgotten, was the worst act of mass murder in American history. Patterson Smith, who supplies me with antiquarian books, sold me a copy of an extremely rare item, a slim volume entitled The Bath School Disaster, which was written and privately printed by a local merchant named M.J. Ellsworth. By bad luck, the volume went into storage with the rest of my personal effects when I moved to Europe in 1994, as a result of which, the song was written from memory. Lacking my primary source, I exercised a bit of poetic license regarding the details, as a result of which, there are a number of factual inaccuracies in the piece. For example, the incident occurred in 1927, not 1928. The broad outlines of the story are, however, correct.

An excerpt from an "X-Files" fan-fiction partially set in Bath and mentioning the Disaster is here; due to the NC-17/X-rated nature of the rest of the "work", I will not provide the URL where it came from The excerpt itself is PG-rated, but I have four major problems with it:

• Pleasant Hill Cemetery is half a mile north of the I69 overhead pass (and there isn't enough traffic on Webster Road to create a thought-disturbing "roar"),
• there hasn't been a dirt road paved over in years,
• there's no 7-11 in Bath that I know of, and
• the author repeats the false legend about the "Girl With A Cat" statue being made of the pennies that were collected to pay for it.

Other Links:
An initial search back in 2000 turned up no links dedicated to the Bath School Disaster (thus the reason for this page), but some more searching revealed it as being mentioned in the following links. They came from google.com and yahoo.com

To reduce the size of this main page, excerpts from the links are on a separate page. They fall into the following categories:

Note that once I've captured the info from these sites, I don't track them any more, and I have been informed that some of the links no longer work. If you'd like to try to see the entire original page that the excerpts came from, please copy the URL then paste it into the search engine at the Internet Wayback Machine, but not all of them will show up there either

I also received this e-mail directing me to the Southeast Michigan Ghost Hunters Society and specifically the pictures page. I include this here in the interest of completeness. As for my personal opinion, as an engineer I'm skeptical (couldn't the "orbs" just be fireflies?), but as a Christian I'm also learning that the spiritual world is not subject to the laws of science, and there are many things about it, and God, that can be neither proven nor disproven (I wouldn't really want a God who could be proven scientifically, or completely explained). However, I also feel that "superstition is the worm that crawls from the grave of dead faith" (as somebody else put it), and as the Bible says, "it is appointed for men to die and after this [comes] judgement", and therefore departed souls probably do not wander the earth as ghosts. But I also believe that "a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument". Another ghost hunter's experiences are posted here.

The April 2003 "Touched By An Angel" series finale involved a boiler explosion at a school killing nearly all of the children in a small town - needless to say, this hit awfully close to home for me An alternate link without pictures (but still a large text file) is here, and a Usenet thread where I posted my objections to the show is here. Since the traffic in the group is so light, I doubt there will be many replies to it, if any. One of my biggest objections is that the school looked a little too intact to have killed everybody in it

While more children (186) died in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, note that it was (1) non-US and (2) involved more than one perpetrator. However, the victims of the BSD probably went through similar emotions as the Beslan victims "Children Bear Emotional Scars from School Siege"

References:
For more information, please consult the following:

• The Lansing State Journal and Lansing Capital News (both available on microfilm at the Michigan State Library)
• The Clinton County Republican/News
• "The Bath School Disaster", by MJ Ellsworth, 1927, reprinted 199x? Back in August 2000, original copies were going for up to $135 at Barnes and Noble, but that link no longer returns anything A copy is available for room use only at the Michigan State University Library in East Lansing, MI, or see the on-line version.
• "Mayday", by Grant Parker, 1980, Liberty Press. Currently out of stock at amazon.com. But two copies are available for check-out to Michigan residents over 16 at the Michigan State University Library in East Lansing, MI. My personal opinion of this book is that the author did a little more pyschological second-guessing than was necessary, but it's still worth reading.
• Bath Township historian Gene Wilkins ([email protected]), who has copies of the above two books available for sale (they are also available at the Bath Pharmacy). Gene may also be reached at 517-487-5331.
• Michigan History Magazine, May/June 1981 (Grant Parker) and May/June 1999 (James W. Hixson, former Bath school administrator). Only the latter issue is available from their back issue page.
• Bath Sesquicentennial booklet (available at the DeWitt Public Library).
• "That's the way it was in Bath" (compilation of student papers, my parents' personal copy)

Feedback:
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Thanks for reading and remembering.

visitors to this page.

Compilation copyright © 2000-2007 by Ronald D. Bauerle; copyrights held by original authors and sources are still so held. The material published on this site may not be reproduced for commercial purposes. Historical researchers are free to use this material for reference and research purposes. All other rights reserved.

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