By Abbey Toner
A: Alphabet
During elementary school, kids are aged 5-11. All elementary schoolers should, in theory, know how to read. They should learn the alphabet in preschool, at the ages of 3-4.
In the 1920s, schools often combined all grades. During elementary school, kids would have been aged 5-14.
Psychologists would say that elementary memories impact our identities as adults. I would agree. The memory of those elementary school children has certainly helped to shape my identity.
B: Bath
B is for bath and for Bath the city in London, the small town in Ohio, and the even smaller town in Michigan. B is for bomb and bath-bomb. B is also for the Bath School massacre of 1927.
C: Car
It wasn’t a car. It was a truck. The tires were replaced the day before. The truck-bed was filled. The rifle was loaded. He arrived a half an hour after the explosion, summoning you towards the vehicle.
D: Detonating
The north wing had detonated properly. But, the bamboo shoots rigging the wings together hadn’t worked. The south wing stood.
Cleo Clayton had made it out of the North wing, confused and likely concussed. When looking for his mother, he stood too close to a nearby truck. The shrapnel from the truck’s detonation killed him.
I remember learning that Kahoe had hit Huyck with his truck. They didn’t tell us about the shrapnel in elementary school. I prefer my version – less people die.
E: Emil
Emil Nobel died in a Nitroglycerin explosion in his father’s factory in 1864. Alongside him were many of his peers, fellow factory workers. They were victims of an explosive accident. Emil’s brother Alfred was not in the factory. He survived.
Nitroglycerin is still used in explosives today.
F: Formula
Dynamite’s formula is C3H5(ONO2)3.
G: Goodbye
In 2014, I said hello to Bath. I stayed until 2024 and said goodbye with my diploma in hand.
Now I live far away, where no one knows about the wooden chairs and picture days. I think I’m glad that they don’t. Even if I said goodbye to the school, I didn’t stop thinking about it, but at least they never need to.
H: Huyck
Eli Emory Huyck had seen an explosion before. He served in World War 1 prior to his time serving as superintendent.
As a child, I believed his picture looked undoubtedly similar to Harry Potter. As a middle schooler, I believed the shrapnel could have given him a matching scar. Later, I found out he had died in the second explosion. I avoided his picture after that.
I: Intercom
The Intercom beeped at 8 am that morning to remind us that there was a legacy to be mindful of. Something like that, I couldn’t hear over the yelled bomb threat, a joke. The intercom buzzed and stopped. I realized then that it was May 18th at Bath High School, the anniversary of the bombing.
J: James Couzens Memorial Park
James Couzens Memorial Park rested a solid 100 feet away from the middle school, directly across the road. In case of a fire, all students were told to run there. No one ever had to evacuate fully.
James Couzen Memorial Park is also the home of the original Bath Elementary School’s Coupla; the only thing left from the last time a Bath school was on fire. It has a plaque, including a list of all those lost. No one I know ever stopped to read it.
K: Kitten (Girl with a Kitten)
School-aged children throughout Michigan donated their pennies in 1928. Carlton Angell collected them. Using the metal he formed a statue named “Girl with a Kitten.” The girl he created stares wistfully at something, her dress blowing in the wind. She resides in the Bath Middle School Museum.
L: Lives
Dynamite was created in response to tragedy. Alfred Nobel’s brother died in an accident, drawing Alfred into study. Through his work, Alfred Nobel created Dynamite, a safely transportable explosive device.
Dynamite is also easily used, possibly why Kahoe chose to use it. Strangely, he could have used anything; he had a chemical engineering degree. Maybe he chose dynamite because of its tragic backstory, maybe because it fits underneath the school.
M: Museum
The Bath Middle School Museum is a small, oval shaped room connected to the auditorium. I spent a decent chunk of time wandering the perimeter of it during Drama Club rehearsals. It contains old lockers and the safe from Huyck’s office. It also contains a wooden chair. A panicked kindergartener had carried it out during the bombing, unsure what to do. I only cared to look at the cheerleader uniforms.
N: Nitroglycerin
Nitroglycerin is often colorless or pale yellow. I typically associate it with red. Red for fire, and for blood, and for anger.
Nitroglycerin is similarly known to be extremely explosive. It is because of this property, rather than color, that is used in dynamite. Red is also the color I used to see dynamite as, like my old picture books.
O: Oil
In 1911, an unnamed woman died in an oil fire when attempting to light her stove. An onlooker threw water onto her, which only made it worse. The water bucket caused the woman to be consumed, dying a mere 24 hours later.
Rumors began to spread. Neighbors whispered to neighbors, believing that the same man who threw the water had started the fire: the woman’s step-son, a man named Andrew Kahoe.
P: Power
Dynamis is a Greek word meaning power or strength. Exousia is another noun that means strength. Both are nouns with changing endings. No words in Greek end in “-ite.” This grammatical error did not stop Alfred Nobel from naming his invention Dynamite.
Q: Quarrel
Long before the fight on May 18th, Emory Huyck and Andrew Kahoe were at odds. The two were recorded to have quarreled regularly. Kahoe believed Huyck was a useless member of the school board, relenting only because Huyck’s presence guaranteed funding. Huyck seemed aware something was off with Kahoe, but he couldn’t prove it until later when Kahoe bombed the school.
R: Restrictions
There were no restrictions on dynamite purchases in 1926. Regardless, this would not have stopped Kahoe. He stole much of his supplies from a local construction site.
S: Sign
A sign was found on the Kahoe property reading “Criminals are made, not born.”
T: Toner
It seemed to me that all my friends had pictures to point to when we walked through the museum waiting for picture day. They excitedly pointed to the class photos, at last names that matched theirs to mock haircuts or mispronounced maiden names.
No one on the wall had the last name Toner. No one in my family even knew about the massacre until after I had started attending school. I was the one who told them.
U: Unknown
No one knows when Nellie Kahoe died. We know she was released from the hospital from a suspected case of tuberculosis on May 16th. We know that her body was left in the farmhouse, behind the chicken coop. We know that the farm exploded before the school, but her body wasn’t found until after. We know that Andrew Kahoe died on the 18th, and sometime in the two days before his death he murdered his wife.
I wonder if Nellie knew what her husband was going to do to her kids.
V: Victory
1926-1927 was to be the last year Huyck served as superintendent. Kahoe, the janitor, was victorious in the school board battle. Huyck only survived until nearly halfway through 1926. Before Kahoe killed Huyck, they were fighting over a rifle. No one knows who won that fight. Both of them died.
W: Wink
Rescuers arrived at the farmhouse when Kahoe was driving past. He informed them that they should head to the school. I assume that he said so with a wink, for comedic effect.
X: Xantippes
I’ve always been a little ill-tempered. I still can’t help it. I fought with the school board and confronted the superintendent, I glared at my peers, and I was never one for small talk. Unfortunately, Kahoe and I share that trait.
The dictionary would call me a Xantippes. But, even I, in all of my anger and outbursts, never blew anything up.
Y: You
You have, presumably, never heard of the Bath School Massacre until now. It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere. Our biggest news in 98 years was having a cougar appear for a while.
Should we be grateful that we haven’t had anything new or should you be grateful that none of it happened to you?
Z: Zeal
The parents were nearly overzealous to get to their kids after the explosion happened. They pushed through police and firemen, all watching in horror. I wonder if they wished they didn’t go.
I used to wish I didn’t go to Bath, perhaps overzealous to leave. I don’t regret escaping being stuck in neighborhood feuds, or the picture days, or the whispers. Sometimes, though, I wish someone else was as unfazed to bomb threats as me.
Abbey Toner hails for Lansing Michigan, and she attends college in Marion, Indiana. Abbey is a Creative Writing major at Indiana Wesleyan University.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 