In 1927, a man named Andrew Kehoe (1872–1927) perpetrated what remains the worst school massacre in American history when he murdered thirty-eight schoolchildren and six adults, and injured fifty-eight more in Bath, Michigan. This haunting and diminutive figure is a hand-carved replica of a cast bronze statue made to memorialize this event. The statue was funded by pennies contributed by children across the state and designed by Michigan State University artist Carleton W. Angell, who is better known for paleontological drawings and sculptures that he made for the university’s natural history museum and science departments. It is not known how the E. A. Hatch who made and signed this tiny carving was related to the tragedy, nor whether he gleaned a measure of comfort in recreating the small, vulnerable figure. It testifies to the horrific event in a pencil inscription on the base. On the back, it is further inscribed and dated March 15, 1928, which is curious because this is months before the installation of the bronze statue on the site of a new school, along with a memorial marker and the cupola of the original school building.

In 1927, Bath was a small agricultural area ten miles northeast of Lansing, with only around three hundred residents. Five years earlier, the township had voted to replace scattered one-room schools with a new, consolidated school district. To pay for the larger school facility, an increase in property taxes was levied on local landowners. When the new consolidated school opened, it had 236 students enrolled in grades 1 through 12.

Kehoe had studied electrical engineering at Michigan State College, and moved to Bath in 1919, when he and his wife purchased her family home and farmstead from a relative. As a large property owner, he was heavily assessed to pay for the new consolidated school. In 1924, he was elected to the school board as treasurer, arguing for lowering taxes and often at odds with other members of the board and the superintendent. He served as Bath Township clerk in 1925, but was publically defeated the following year. During these years, Kehoe’s wife was gravely ill, and he was suffering serious financial difficulties. In the period leading up to his devastating actions, he had virtually stopped farming, making payments, and engaging with his neighbors.

As an electrical engineer, Kehoe was sometimes called in to assist in technical issues at the school. Over a period of months, and unbeknownst to anyone, he had been rigging the school’s infrastructure with almost one thousand pounds of explosives. On May 18, 1927, Kehoe firebombed his home and barn; he had already murdered his wife, and bound his animals so they could not escape. Simultaneously, he detonated bombs in both wings of the hated school at 8:45 a.m. Although most of the dynamite failed to explode, the building’s north wing was destroyed and so many young lives with it. Around twenty or thirty minutes after the explosion, as rescuers were gathering at the scene, Kehoe drove up to the school in his truck that he had rigged as a dirty bomb, filled with nuts, bolts, and machine parts. He fired his shotgun into the truck killing himself, the superintendent, and others including a young boy who had escaped the initial blast in the school, as well as injuring many bystanders. A sign later found on Kehoe’s fence read, "Criminals are made, not born."

Stacy C. Hollander, "In Memory of the Bath School Tragedy, 1928" exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.