17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wrenching look at how school disasters were born, April 12, 2009
This review is from: Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (Paperback)
April 20th marks the tenth anniversary of the Columbine High School killings in Colorado. Most of us tend to think of this horrific event as a product of life in our modern world, which is filled with violence and rage. But Columbine was far from the first school disaster.
Writer Arnie Bernstein chronicles the first United States' mass murder in "Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing," which is rich with detailed interviews, newspaper snippets, public documents, and psychological discussions. The story takes place in 1927 in the small town of Bath, Michigan, where a farming community built their first consolidated school after a history of one-room schoolhouses. On the school board was a man named Andrew Kehoe. As the book goes on, we get to know Kehoe quite well.
The book sets up the psychopath Kehoe quite well with descriptions of his bizarre upbringing, then neighbors' commentary on his odd methods of farming (leaving most of the crop to rot in the fields), and some pretty nasty stories about his relationships with animals. It always seems to me that if a person is cruel to animals, it says volumes about what kind of character he has. Kehoe, it seems, had very little character at all.
But he managed to fool a lot of people. To some he was just the neighbor down the way--who had a fondness for dynamite and blowing things up in the middle of the night.
As the school board treasurer, Kehoe would balance books to the penny. But he wouldn't always get his way in policy decisions. He also had an unexplainable, long-running hatred for superintendent Emory Huyck. No one knew what gripes were festering in Kehoe's brain, but something made him spend long hours in the basement under Bath Consolidated School. When discovered by the janitor, he'd explain it away as "fixing the wiring." Meanwhile, he kept ordering more dynamite from various sources.
There are a few side tales. Kehoe's wife Nellie was chronically sick with breathing problems and was often in the hospital, giving Kehoe plenty of time alone. He also had at least two severe brain injuries, for which he never got proper treatment.
The day before the school year ended, Kehoe finally cracked. At 8:25 a.m. a clock triggered an electrical system that set off an enormous amount of dynamite hidden in the school's basement. The school heaved up and then its roof came crashing down. Children were trapped--alive and dead. Teachers tried to save them, if they weren't seriously injured themselves. Huyck helped the high school students jump from the roof to safety. Meanwhile, the Kehoe home burst into flames and dynamite roared there too.
Bernstein does a remarkable job of portraying what the confusion might have felt like by slowing down the time and writing small vignettes. One child wonders about his siblings as he is trapped in the rubble. A teacher instinctively reaches out and hugs two children to her chest. A child watches an inkwell shoot to the ceiling. Later, that's all he can remember. A woman plants melons, looks up after hearing a boom, and hears faint screams coming from down the road.
Amid all the chaos and confusion, the little stories like these are what we remember. The rest of the story ends in predictable horror. Kehoe drives up to the school, his car full of explosives, calls Huyck to his vehicle and blows the both of them sky high. The farm continues to burn. Only later do authorities find the charred remains of Nellie. Thirty-eight children and six adults die. The funerals go on for days.
Bernstein's book is instructive because it shows that psychosis can happen in any era. Kehoe was a 1920s monster, just as Columbine's Dylan Klebold was one for the modern era. There is no reason for the madness that the psychopath creates. Kehoe had no gripe against children; something just went off in his head. He left behind a sign that said, "Criminals are made, not born." Typical of psychopaths, he took the blame off of himself.
Today, you will find a memorial in Bath, Mich., on the grounds of the old school. It's a peaceful park now. The violence that marked its past seems to have been erased. But Bernstein makes sure that the significance of Bath never is forgotten.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Tribute, April 3, 2009
This review is from: Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (Paperback)
As a resident of Bath, Michigan in the 1990's I can attest to the fact that the bombing of 1927 is still a topic that is spoken of in whispered yet respectful tones.
Unfortunately, most people of today have forgotten what transpired 80+ years ago. This is partially due to the fact that many of the survivors are now gone. Of those unrelated to Bath, Michigan or the people involved, the events of that spring day so many years ago have been replaced over the years by other events, other tragedies.
In the aftermath of such events as the Columbine High School shooting and Virginia Tech, today's media rushes to report previous or related incidents, but nearly always forget to print the very first...the event that shook a State, a Nation, and the World. An event caused by one man that changed the lives of so many.
In this book, Arnie Bernstein delicately writes of the events leading up to the bombing of Bath Consolidated School. Through meticulous research and eye-witness reports, he manages to transport the reader back through time to a day when the sun was bright, the flowers were perfect for picking, and like those of today, the children were itching for summer break, that is until...their world changed in the blink of an eye.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Must-Read for True Crime Buffs!, May 16, 2009
This review is from: Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (Paperback)
Think "In Cold Blood" meets "To Sleep with the Angels." A riveting, devastating journalistic history of a forgotten but sickeningly modern school bombing massacre from 1927. True crime is not a genre that usually moves me, but this book kept me turning the pages. Well-researched, stunning, and sensitively written.
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