"Criminals are Made, Not Born"

On May 8th 1927, Irene Dunham stayed home from school due to a sore throat. She was a senior at the Bath Consolidated school outside of Lansing Michigan. Her and her mother were in the kitchen when they heard a loud boom from the distance, silencing both of them. After a few moments of confusion, they jumped in the car to drive into town, hoping to find the source of the noise. Instead, they found the aftermath of the worst school disaster in US history.

Bath Township is a village outside of Lansing, with a population of just over 3,000. The town is often overlooked, seen as one of the many small towns dotting the map of Michigan. One thing sticks out, a small park with a cupola painted stark white and red. The air around the small structure feels heavy, and depressive. As if something is pressing down on your chest. If you visit at the right time of year, you may even see flowers resting around the base of the structure. This is the James Couzens Memorial Park in memory of the nearly forgotten disaster at the Bath Consolidated School, also known as the Bath School Massacre.

Andrew Kehoe was a 55 year old man living on his farm in the town of bath. He was known for being very neat and organized, he couldn't handle any amount of mess. He was the treasurer on the school board in the distract, though he felt like rarely had a say. The school district had approved a new school for the town in 1922, which had caused a tax hike, which Andrew was not happy about. Despite this, he became a handyman for the building. Even though the man was known to be neat, he was not good at caring for his farm, and did not bring in much money. In 1926, Kehoe was informed that his mortgage was being foreclosed upon. In the next couple of months, his wife also became ill with an unknown illness that put her in and out of the hospital, costing more in medical bills.

Hoping to have his revenge, Kehoe began to buy large amounts of explosives such as pyrotol and dynamite. Both of these were commonly used for excavating on farms, and to avoid suspicion he began to use small amounts of these explosives to tear out stumps on his land. He also bought small portions of dynamite at different stores, and due to his ties to the school, he was easily able to access the building. Slowly, he began to place these explosives underneath the foundations of the school. He also began to create fire bombs, and hid them around his farm and home, something his sick wife did not notice.

In may of 1927, he knew it was the time to execute the plan he had been carefully crafting over the last year. On the morning of may 8th, he beat his wife to death. He placed her body in a wheelbarrow outside of his home, and lit the farm ablaze. Emergency services were contacted by neighbors as they rushed to help put out the fires. During the small amount of time before the blaze began, Kehoe filled his truck with as much shrapnel and explosives as he could, laying a pistol on the passenger seat of his truck, and waited for the second explosion of the hour.

Within minutes of emergency services being called, another large explosion was heard. This explosion could be heard all the way in lansing, and caught the attention of everyone in the town. The dynamite underneath the north wing of the Bath School, which was mostly elementary, had detitanted. It was described as the school being bounced and slammed back into the ground. The roof and walls collapsed on top of teachers and students.

The people of Bath Township rushed to the scene, pulling apart debris and pulling children out of the rubble. Body parts were thrown everywhere, hanging from telephone wires above their heads. Parents screamed in the field in front of the building, holding their children in their arms, some alive and some dead. Haunting images have made it through the test of time, a woman holding her two daughters in each arm, and her son on her lap. All three children were dead.

A half an hour after the first explosion, Kehoe drove up to the school, calling the superintendent over as he walked around to the passenger door of his car. As the superintendent, panicked, approached the man, Kehoe pulled the pistol out of his truck. He aimed the gun at the explosives, and fired. The ensuing explosion killed five more people, including Kehoe, the superintendent, and another 8 year old boy.

The race against time continued to get as many of the children out of the school as possible, dead or alive. Upon the search for children, the police made another horrifying discovery. There were more explosives. They were rigged to be set off with the others underneath the building. Kehoe intended to destroy the entire school, and kill everyone in it. People kept searching, even knowing that the explosives under their feet could detitante at any moment.

After everything was over, 43 were dead, and 58 were injured. Kehoes body was found later, confirming he had been killed in the third explosion. Upon investigating at the remains of his home, they found the body of his wife, unrecognizable from the blast, and a sign that had been meticulously painted with only a few words. Criminals are made, not born.

In the aftermath of the disaster the world turned its head towards other headlines, and slowly, the Bath School Massacre was forgotten. The school was demolished, and in its place a new agricultural school was built. The originally cupola was used on top of the new school to memorial of those lost. Eventually, in the 1970s, that school was demolished to build a new school across the street. The historic cupola was taken from the roof of the building before it was demolished, and placed in a memorial park on the site where the original school stood. Hauntingly, you can see one of the current schools from the hill the memorial rests on. While the structure has been cared for and repainted, it is completely original.

“If you go around talking,” an anonymous local told me, “you can find that over half this town knew someone, who knew someone who was in the school at the time of the disaster. My grandmother remembered it until the day she died. Even after she couldn't remember our faces, she could remember her friends.”