The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., have led many people to characterize school violence as a modern affliction, a byproduct of our national obsession with guns and media violence. But the deadliest school-related massacre in American history happened in 1927, at an elementary school in Bath, Mich. A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over a burdensome property tax, wired the building with dynamite and set it off in the morning of May 18. Kehoe’s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children.
We Americans have a disturbing tendency when it comes to problems and incidents that impact us today. We tend to assume, as has every generation before us, that our world is going to Hell in a hand basket because of the terrible, horrible, very bad things going on around us. Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly some terrible, horrible, very bad things happening these days. As the saying goes, though, things could always be world…because in this case they have been. As horrific as the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was, I, much to my consternation, can top that.
The short version is that on May 18, 1927, a disgruntled citizen by the name of Andrew Kehoe wired the elementary school in Bath, MI, with dynamite, and then blew it up. While school was in session. The blast killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children. Kehoe, whose political beliefs would today make him a proud member of the Tea Party, hated taxes. Rather than merely voicing his considerable displeasure regarding a new property tax he found onerous, he decided to send his message in a manner that no one in the community would be able to ignore.
Over several months, Kehoe gained access to the school (this was in the days before security was a consideration) and packed the structure tightly with dynamite. After detonating the dynamite at 8.45am on May 18th, Kehoe went to his home, killed his wife, and destroyed his farm. He then drove his truck, which he’d also packed with dynamite to the scene of the explosion. Thirty minutes after the initial blast at the school, Kehoe detonated his truck bomb while engaged in a conversation with the school superintendent. The resulting explosion killed Kehoe, the superintendent, and a few more innocent bystanders.
Investigators later determined that the only thing that had prevented the initial explosion from exacting an even higher death toll was a short in Kehoe’s wiring that failed to detonate 500 lbs. of dynamite and several sacks of gunpowder. Save for that, investigators discovered that Kehoe’s wiring had been so expertly done that they initially found it difficult to believe anyone could have done it alone.
The Bath school bombing still stands as the worst school massacre in this country’s history. It didn’t involve guns, but it did involve a man who was undoubtedly severely mentally ill.
As unbelievably horrific and tragic as the Bath disaster was, there’s a lesson we could stand to learn from it today. There’s no doubt that the easy availability of guns were the proximate cause of the massacre in Newtown, CT…and so many others, including the attack on shoppers at Clackamas Town Center (where I once worked) three days prior to Newtown. Guns aren’t the only problem, though. Until and unless we make a commitment to properly care for the mentally ill among us, incidents like these will continue. You can look at any massacre, from Bath through Columbine to Newtown, and the recurring theme is mental illness. I’m not saying that providing proper and timely mental health care will eliminate the problem of random senseless massacres. The problem is far too complex for simple, broad predictions. I do think a case can be made for believing that such care may well prevent a good number of future disasters. It’s time that we begin to care for the mentally ill among us, instead of seeing them as burdens unworthy of our tax dollars.
One last question while I’m thinking about it: are we really going to be OK with a system in which it’s far easier to obtain a gun than it is to get mental health care?
