The Bath School Disaster was an incident on May 18, 1927, in which a dynamite blast rocked the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, about 10 miles northeast of Lansing, in the U.S. state of Michigan. The bombings killed 45 people and injured 58, making it the worst school violence in U.S. history. The blast destroyed the south wing of the building and killed 38 children and teachers. Subsequent investigation determined that the dynamite had been planted in the basement of the school by an embittered school-board member, Andrew Kehoe, who was resentful of the higher taxes that resulted from the school's construction in 1922 and which he blamed for the impending foreclosure on his farm. There were an additional 500 pounds of dynamite in the rest of the school that failed to detonate.

Soon afterwards, Kehoe took his own life and four bystanders, including the school superintendent Emory Huyck, by detonating dynamite in his truck as he sat parked in front of the school while rescue workers searched through the rubble.

The next morning, Kehoe's wife was found dead at their farm, apparently killed by Kehoe on the day of the blast. He had also rigged explosives which burned down his house and other buildings on the farm before the school blast.

Apparently, Kehoe had spent much of that spring stringing wires and hiding dynamite in the basement of the 300-student school. Kehoe did not arouse any suspicion because he was known as a penny-pincher on the school board, and people assumed he was doing work himself to save the cost of hiring an electrician.

The school explosion made front page headlines of national newspapers, sharing the page with news of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight. Michigan Governor Fred Green created the Bath Relief Fund, and people from across the country expressed their sympathies and offered financial support. James Couzens, philanthropist and U.S. Senator from Michigan, gave generously to the fund, and on August 18, 1928, the new school built on the same site was dedicated as the "James Couzens Agricultural School".

In 1975 the James Couzens Agricultural School was torn down and replaced by a new high school, east of Bath.

The Bath School Disaster remained the worst bombing incident in the United States until Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995.

External links

• Information about the Bath School Disaster
• Crime Library's "Hell Comes To Bath" feature
• Lansing State Journal article on the 75th anniversary of the Bath School Disaster.
• A genealogy site that has extensive links to articles about the massacre and images.