Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing

BATH MASSACRE

BATH MASSACRE

AMERICA’S FIRST SCHOOL BOMBING

Arnie Bernstein

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS       ANN ARBOR

Copyright © 2009 by Arnie Bernstein

All rights reserved

Published in the United States of America by

The University of Michigan Press

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed on acid-free paper

2012     2011     2010     2009        4     3

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bernstein, Arnie.

Bath massacre : America’s first school bombing / Arnie Bernstein.

   p.    cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11606-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-472-11606-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-472-03346-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-472-03346-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Bombings—Michigan—Bath (Township)—History—20th century. 2. Bath (Mich. : Township)—History—20th century. 3. Students—Crimes against—Michigan—Bath (Township)—History—20th century.

4. Murder—Michigan—Bath (Township)—History—20th century.

5. Suicide bombers—Michigan—Bath (Township)—History—20th century.

6. Kehoe, Andrew P. (Andrew Philip), 1872-1927. I. Title.

F574.B18B47   2009

977.4'041—dc22

2008048155

ISBN 978-0-472-02470-4 (electronic)

For the children of Bath

CONTENTS

Prologue: April 16, 2007

One
      A Community in Michigan

Two
     Andrew P. Kehoe

Three
   Dawn of a Decade

Four
     New Man in Town

Five
      The Bath Consolidated School

Six
        A Growing Storm

Seven
    Electricity

Eight
    A School, a Farm

Nine
     The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Ten
       Requiems

Eleven
   In the Matter of the Inquest

          as to the Cause of Death of

          Emery E. Huyck, Deceased

Twelve
  Summer

Thirteen
  Tulips

Victims’ Names

Acknowledgments

Notes

Selective Bibliography

A voice is heard in Ramah

lamentation and bitter weeping

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children,

because they are not.

—JEREMIAH 31:15

When lilacs are in bloom

I think of the Bath School explosion

because that day

the children brought bouquets to their teacher

—
MARTHA HORTON
SURVIVOR

PROLOGUE: APRIL 16, 2007

The morning of April 16, 2007, dawned clear and bright over central Michigan. In Dewitt, a small town about twenty miles from the state capital of Lansing, ninety-six-year-old Willis Cressman woke at his usual time, ate breakfast, then puttered around the house. A lifelong resident of the area, Cressman lived a good long life. Born in 1911, he’d grown up in the nearby town of Bath. Before retiring, he was a jack-of-all-trades. In various phases of life, he’d worked on road crews, farmed, and operated an excavation business. A veteran of World War II, he was one of the many brave soldiers who hit Anzio Beach on January 22, 1944. He never forgot that day and all the shells exploding around him. Yet Anzio wasn’t the first time Cressman was in the midst of deadly explosions.
¹

In her home on the outskirts of nearby Bath, not far from Dewitt, Josephine Cushman Vail, a woman just a few months shy of her ninety-fourth birthday, was beginning her morning as well. Vail and Cressman were old schoolmates, first as students in a one-room schoolhouse during the 1910s and then in a larger, consolidated school in the 1920s. Those days held fond memories of classroom accomplishments, athletic and social events, friends, and a sense of community.
²

Cressman and Vail had other recollections of the Bath Consolidated School: the events that unfolded on May 18, 1927. That day was something they never wanted anyone else to experience.

About the time Cressman and Vail began their mornings, Seung-Hui Cho, a twenty-three-year-old student at Virginia Tech, located in Blacksburg, Virginia, started his day. At 7:15 a.m., he entered West Ambler Johnston Hall, an on-campus dormitory, barged into the room of Emily Hilscher, a nineteen-year-old freshman, then shot her and twenty-two-year-old senior Ryan C. Clark, the resident adviser for the floor, who happened to be in Hilscher’s room. Both were dead at the scene.