Show r Inquisitive Tourists Flock Like Ghouls to Town of Tragedy Souvenir Hunters Haunt I Blasted School Where Children Perished sy y ALLENE ALLE E SUMMER ER NEA EA Service Writer OATH ATH Mich Aug Aus 20 The 20 The town of ol BATH B dead and dying ding children has be become be- be become become come a playground for the tourist It was In May that Andrew Kehoe school board official crazed by b ever ever- mounting taxes craftily placed his bombs under the new consolidated td school cho l building killing himself and more than 40 90 school children eyed Dry stunned crushed Bath burled buried Its dead dad took tool the white ribbons ribbon from its doors end and tried to forget Then came the tho tourists sniffing li life lile e ghouls at this town of dead children Here was oas a thrill Indeed There are guards at our tomb of the unknown soldier keeping that marble mausoleum und faced by the souvenir sharks shark's knife knUe But Bath has no guards at t its mau mau- mausoleum mausoleum of death The town Is too poor poOl Bath can only endure r SWARMS SWAmIS OF Or AUTOS The white-haired white town to cobbler old Felix Marsch tried to dull the pounding pound pound- pounding pounding ing In his own o heart hean by pounding pounding at his shoes The more the tourists came the more he pounds Sundays are days of horror he says sas The automobiles come like swarms of beetles They park right up to the very ery doors fighting righting to get park puk- parking pukIng parking ing space nearest the house that lost the most children Then they start s rt a adash adash adash dash to the door and begin their ques ques- questions How many children did you ro lose please Were they badly mangled show Would you 01 us pictures ones that were vere killed Did they the Ih 11 the c e long Ions after nf r they were ere hit Then they the trot down to the school- school schoolhouse house house what's what's left of it they've It-they've they've writ writ- tied it away and carried away bricks bric s until theres there's hardly anything left to tear down WRITING G THEIR NAMES IES They write their names on the blackboards In the very ery rooms where those little kids were blown to pieces Sweethearts draw hearts with arrows in them and put their Initials within the he hearts The white-haired white cobbler finished his shoe Know what they remind me of he asked his back still bent his arms armst t for a moment moment Like a swarm of flies flics around carrion Bath has not started its new school building yet Families without children homes now like bare brown trees with all the blossoms and ana fruit stripped from the boughs cannot be expected to be much interested in school ool houses Besides B ldes the few uninjured children and the others who arc are now beginning to come back home day by day from hospitals lit let nearby cities some crip crip- crippled crippled crippled pled some sightless some deaf shudder shudder shudder der at the very thought of to school in the fall MANY IA l HOUSES EMPTY No children swarm the summer streets of Bath One may may see ace t ee two to or three pallid youngsters clinging to their mothers' mothers hands limping per per- perhaps perhaps perhaps haps silent nt and with old age misery in their childish eyes ees windows show where family niter alter family unable to bear the sights and sounds of a town to once made sweet by happy children have left the stricken city Next Net door to the schoolhouse where hert I souvenir hunters fight for slivers and bricks stands sands the house where here Old Man DeBar D ar lived alone The house house I Is 13 honey-combed honey as though shot full I of Old Man DeBar saw the torn I and 2nd mangled limbs of little children I Irain rain through the air For days he wandered about the town in a numb I It stupor t until t his h Detroit e daughter d h came a i and go rescued him from the Town of i I Dead and Dying Children CLOSED CLOSE UP HOME Next door to the abandoned DeBar house stands that of Mrs Chet Church Its windows are arc boarded up and vines pulled down I from the porch Mrs Church moved away a way She could not stand that rubbish heap of death Just two taro doors away Besides the tourists tourists' tour tour- tourists tourists' tourIsts tourIsts' questionings were too much for her nerves But they say that every cv I few weeks she comes back to ramble through the empty terror-haunted terror rooms for s disappears again Josephine Cushman substitute tele tele- telephone telephone telephone phone operator is going gOin to school in InHolt inHolt Holt Mich this year ear Her little brother Ralph was as one of the 40 children hurtled through the air that mad day when Andrew Kehoe fired his bomb of death Josephine wouldn't be alive to to go toto goto 0 to school this fall either if Ralph Falph hadn't been b en afraid the other othet lids I would laugh at me when hen his big sis sis- sister sister alster ter wanted anted to visit his class clas' that fatal f tal day dayI dayI I wI didn't have any school that day da myself because our grade was as having ha exams Josephire says and he never h a w h U 1 I q rL Inquisitive tourists keep k p alive th h t 1 ra 30 o ri I v. Ieh have hue haunted the he town of ot Bata Rath Mich ever e since a school explosion last Iu spring killed iO to of Its e l As a result many residents r are movin mo away unable to endure ender end it any my longer loner In the center c Is the ced d school ool as It looks today At th left arc two of the many deserted d homes in the town lawn And at d the right is the maypole swing In the playground on the school hool yard ard It U has not been used sines th ties disaster had gone to school without me m and I wanted to take t ke him but he couldn't have hive it H. People just haven't the hart h art to get Iet the new building going coine says Mrs David Harte whose little lItile grandson Robby was one of the mangled 40 We organized d a school bee bec end all went ent down to tear down what the I explosion had left Idt of t the Ie e schoolhouse but we had to quit tears were so streaming down our faces the mens men's as asell well ell as the women's that tha we had to stop slop There here is a postmistress in Bath these days das Glenn Smith the postmaster was killed that awful day and his wife who lost her father and nephew in the same crash Is carrying on LAND LANs CANT CAN'T BE SOLD We cant can't sell and get set out she says because buy a square inch of land near Bath these days And Sunday after Sunday the thou thou- thousands thousands sands of tourists come The impoverished ImpoverIshed impoverIshed little town must pay a cop to untangle cars tars that careen together on Andy Kehoe's farm They tried doing without him one Sunday and there was another bad accident Bath just cant can't stand one more hurt hurton on their soil so the officer was put back again If they'd only stop tormenting us with questions moan those left in Bath Town of Dead and Dying Chil Chil- Children Children dren |