Maniac Quotes

“Foremost on his list, however, was something that Bishop—who would prove to be tragically prophetic—saw as unique to American society: “the indiscriminate sale and use of firearms.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Clinging “to the position of the aggrieved ‘victim’ despite overwhelming evidence that their own actions have placed them in their unpleasant situations,” they “become stagnated in their own self-pity, anger, and persecutory ruminations.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Such persons are “collectors of injustice” who nurture their wounded narcissism and retreat into a fantasy life of violence and revenge.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“The 1920s were the heyday of yet another movement soon to be embraced by the apostles of racial purity: eugenics. Though eugenics has come to be associated with the genocidal horrors of the Nazis, it originated in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century as an idealistic, if profoundly misguided, attempt to improve society by encouraging childbearing in couples with “desirable traits” and regulating (or actively preventing through forced sterilization) reproduction by the “unfit.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“We are a great people, but we had better look our faults squarely in the face.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“As you value your own moral sanity, cut out hate, quit your antisocial feelings, stop your brooding and introspection, cease to take offense easily, turn your thoughts outward into the sunlight.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“By contrast, Andrew Kehoe’s appalling deed—an unholy blend of school massacre, terrorist bombing, and suicide attack—was seen not as a symptom of societal breakdown but as a sheer aberration, the singular act of a midwestern madman. As such, it provided the public with a brief frisson of horror before being relegated to obscurity. Decades would pass before its true relevance became clear, as a precursor of our own era’s worst nightmares.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Within hours, Governor Fred W. Green had arrived with his wife, Helen. Stunned by the devastation, the governor stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and threw himself into the rescue work, while his wife hurried to the grassy knoll to assist the nurses attending to the grievously injured children.3”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“a symptom of a widespread social ill: “the vain principle of personal honor,” an insidious ideal that led “the youth of the present age of the world” to demand violent satisfaction for any insult. To Bennett and others, Colt’s murderous deed was the direct consequence of this “false and bloody code” and Colt himself the living incarnation of what was widely perceived as a prevailing social pathology.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“The Great War reduced western Europe to a shambles but proved to be a boon to American farmers. Desperate for basic agricultural products, war-ravaged countries turned to the US market, sending prices of cotton, corn, wheat, beef, and other commodities soaring. Between 1914 and 1918, the price of a bushel of corn rose from fifty-nine cents to $1.30, a bushel of wheat from $1.05 to $2.34, and hogs from $7.40 to $16.70 per hundred pounds.1 To meet the demand, farmers acquired more land, expanded their herds of livestock, and invested in new equipment, taking out loans on easy credit to bankroll their purchases. In the years following the armistice of 1918, however—as European nations recovered from the catastrophe—US farm exports plunged so dramatically that one scholar describes the market collapse as a “price toboggan.”2 By 1921, the price of “wheat, corn, beef and pork [had] all plummeted by nearly one-half.”3 Farmers, who had enjoyed unprecedented prosperity just a few years earlier, now faced financial ruin, defaulting on equipment loans, tax payments, and mortgages.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“To the members of the school board—who, in early 1923, rewarded him with a two-year extension of his contract, with an annual $200 raise15—Huyck’s demonstrated success as an administrator derived in large measure from his absolute self-assurance and comfort with exercising authority.16 Those same qualities would also make Huyck the target of one deeply unstable man’s deadly and implacable hatred.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Huyck proved to be an outstanding administrator and, despite his lack of experience, quickly achieved one of the board’s top priorities. By ensuring that the teachers, curriculum, and classroom offerings met the necessary educational standards, he earned official accreditation for the school, a certification that made it eligible for federal and state financial aid.9 Along with his academic duties, he made time to coach the school’s poultry-judging team, which—as the local press proudly noted—“won over six other teams from high schools in larger towns in a recent contest.”10 At the annual meeting of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association in November 1923, Emory was chosen as a delegate to the general assembly and helped draft a resolution calling for the strict enforcement of the Volstead Act—formally known as the National Prohibition Act—“not only to prevent production and consumption of alcoholic liquors, but also to teach the children respect for the law.”11 He was also a member of both the Masons, “the most prestigious fraternal organization in Bath’s highly Protestant community,”12 and the Stockman Grange, at whose annual meeting in January 1924 he served as toastmaster and delivered a well-received talk on “The Bean Plant and Its Relation to Life.”13 Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man with his military training, Huyck was something of a disciplinarian, demanding strict standards of conduct from both the pupils and staff. “At day’s end,” writes one historian, “students were required to march from the building to the tune of martial music played on the piano. During the day, students tiptoed in the halls.” When a pair of high-spirited teenaged girls “greeted their barely older teachers with a jaunty ‘Well, hello gals,’” they were immediately sent to the superintendent, who imposed a “penalty [of] individual conferences with those teachers and apologies to them.”14”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“By 1920, he was living back home with his parents while pursuing a degree at Michigan State Agricultural College.5 Specializing in chicken breeding, he proved to be so proficient that, immediately after his graduation, he received a summer school appointment as “instructor in poultry husbandry for federal students”—young veterans attending college with governmental aid.6 In addition to his academic work, the religiously committed Huyck was active in the Student Volunteer Movement, a campaign begun in 1886 to enlist college students for missionary work abroad with the ultimate goal of bringing about (as its watchword put it) “the evangelization of the world in this generation.”7 In April 1922, just prior to his graduation from Michigan State Agricultural College and three months shy of his twenty-eighth birthday, Emory accepted the position of superintendent of the Bath Consolidated School at an annual salary of $2,300. Eight months later, two days after Christmas, Emory married Ethel Newcomb of Pierson, Michigan, six years his senior; she would also join the faculty at the newly built school, teaching “vocal music” and second grade.8”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“The superintendent of the new consolidated school, Emory Huyck, had been recommended for the job by his alma mater, Michigan State Agricultural College.1 He was born in 1894 in Butternut, Michigan, not far from Carson City, one of eleven children, all of whom would outlive him, as would both his parents, William and Mary. After graduating from high school at the top of his class, Emory briefly attended the Ferris Institute in Big Rapids, Michigan. Ferris had been founded in 1884 by future Michigan governor and US senator Woodbridge Nathan Ferris as an “industrial school” meant to provide both practical training and a basic liberal arts education “to all young men and women, regardless of their ages, regardless of their mental attainments, regardless of their present conditions, who desire to make themselves stronger and better.”2 In 1917, while teaching at a school in the Montcalm County village of Pierson, Emory registered for the draft. His registration card suggests that he was not merely willing but was keen to serve his country. To the question “Do you claim exemption from draft?” he answered with an emphatic “I do not,” rather than a simple “no,” as most young men did.3 Stationed at Camp Custer near Battle Creek during the war years, he served as a training officer. He would eventually be commissioned second lieutenant of cavalry in the Officers’ Reserve Corps.4”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“The official dedication of the Bath Consolidated School building, attended by about 250 people, took place on Tuesday, November 14. Speeches were made, commemorative poems written specially for the occasion were recited. Following the program, guests “were invited to light refreshments served in the Home Economics room” and given a tour of the building by members of the high school junior class.14”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Rather than erect a building from scratch, town officials decided that they would save money if they renovated and expanded an existing school. The school they selected was centrally located in the village and had been constructed in 1873 out of bricks supplied by the Bath brick factory. Work began in the fall of 1921 on what would eventually be hailed as “the grandest building ever constructed in the township” and “one of the most modern schools in Mid-Michigan.”11”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Those on the other side of the debate argued forcefully that consolidated schools—with their advanced curriculums, professionally trained teachers, and classes extending through high school—were the only means of affording farm children the kind of educational opportunities available to their urban counterparts. In the end, after two years of bitter struggle, the proponents of consolidation prevailed in Bath when the township voted to fund a new school.10”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“In the years immediately following the end of the Great War, approximately fifty thousand one-room schools were replaced with these “fine upstanding structures—schools that in every way compare[d] with big-city institutions.” By 1922, there were roughly “12,000 of this new type of school in the United States.” Indiana alone had more than one thousand; Ohio, Iowa, and Minnesota more than nine hundred, four hundred, and three hundred, respectively.6”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“In Michigan—where the State Department of Public Instruction had adopted the slogan “A high school education for every boy and girl in Michigan”7—consolidated schools began to replace the old country schoolhouses in 1919. Not everyone, however, was in favor of this change. The push for consolidation produced heated conflicts throughout the region. Many old-timers felt that the type of schooling they had received was perfectly adequate for their children, particularly for the boys who planned to make their livings as farmers. These opponents also bristled at the prospect of paying higher taxes to fund the fancy new schools. “They simply couldn’t see the sense to more than an eighth grade education,” notes one historian, “and they couldn’t see paying for it. Fine if some people wanted high school education for their children, but let them pay tuition and send their children to the city.”8 Foes of consolidation also argued that it was safer for their children to walk to the nearest one-room schoolhouse than to transport them by wagon or bus “over the generally miserable back roads in the . . . countryside”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Among the various reformist crusades that characterized the years between 1890 and 1920 in America—the Progressive Era, as it is known—was a movement to overhaul the badly outdated school systems in rural districts throughout the Midwest. While city children were being educated to compete and succeed in a world of rapid industrial, technological, and scientific change, youngsters in country towns like Bath were being schooled in much the same way as their pioneer grandparents. Though a warm nostalgic glow surrounded the one-room schoolhouses of their childhoods in the minds of many older residents of farm communities, that “type of education,” as one newspaper editorialized, was “antiquated and must go.”4 Throughout the nation, and particularly in the Midwest, large, modern “consolidated schools” providing education from first through twelfth grades began to replace the old-time “little red schoolhouses.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Like his father, Andrew became actively involved in the civic affairs of his community. At the time, farm bureaus were forming throughout the country—cooperative organizations devoted to promoting the practical and economic interests of local farmers.10 When a national farm bureau was founded in 1919, Kehoe “volunteered to head [its] drive for membership.” Two years later, in April 1921, he was elected to the board of directors of its Bath Township unit. He did not retain that position for long. Just seven months later, he abruptly quit the organization.11 From that point on, he directed his energies toward an issue that had come to dominate the politics of his adopted hometown, one that would eventually obsess him to the point of madness.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Mrs. Lulu Harte, who lived nearby and drove Nellie Kehoe to church every Sunday, “had a little fox terrier dog of which she thought a great deal.” Sometime in March 1920—about a year after the Kehoes moved to Bath—the dog “came up missing.” Setting off in search of her pet, she arrived at the Kehoe farm and asked Andrew “if he had seen anything of her dog.” Kehoe allowed that he had. “It was burying a bone beside my road fence,” he explained matter-of-factly, “and I shot the damned nuisance.” Shocked as she was, Mrs. Harte didn’t raise a fuss, merely turning away in silence. But she never drove Nellie to church again.8”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Unlike his neighbors, who toiled in dirt-crusted coveralls and work boots, Kehoe kept himself as neatly groomed as a banker. He rode his tractor in a business suit, vest, and polished shoes. He would hurry home to wash up if his hands got too greasy and was known to change his shirt in the middle of the day if he noticed a sweat stain or smudge of dirt. When finished with his tools, he made sure to put them back in perfect order, each in its rightful place. His barn, as Ellsworth observed, was “cleaner than a great many houses.”6”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“The Kehoes also enjoyed playing cards with other couples at evening get-togethers, held every two weeks or so during the winter months. The pleasant evenings of progressive euchre were marred only occasionally by Andrew’s tendency to chew out other players who didn’t stick strictly to the rules or who committed inadvertent errors. “The people didn’t get angry at him,” reports Monty Ellsworth, “but they didn’t like his severity at a social party.”5 What Ellsworth calls Kehoe’s “severity”—his scorn for those who failed to meet his own exacting standards—was consistent with other aspects of his behavior. Priding himself on his time at Michigan State Agricultural College, Andrew regarded himself as a man of exceptional education and knowledge and cultivated a corresponding air of superiority—a distinguished image that was at odds with his occupation as a farmer.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“Thanks partly to his wife—who had grown up in Bath and was welcomed back warmly by people who had known her as a girl—the Kehoes quickly became integrated into the community social life. Nellie joined the Ladies’ Friday Afternoon Club, whose members took turns hosting weekly meetings. One typical session, held at the Kehoes’ home, began with Mrs. Lida Cushman delivering a talk on “Our Government Buildings.” She was followed by Mrs. Maude Detluff, who read a paper on “The Iron Industry.” Mrs. Edna Schoals then spoke on “The Effects of Strikes upon Mining,” after which Mrs. Shirley Harte “gave a description of Annapolis Military Academy and of Mt. Vernon.”3 Once a year, the club suspended its high-minded activities for the far more lighthearted event known as “Gentlemen’s Night,” attended by the members’ spouses and held at the community hall. At one of these, Andrew distinguished himself with his witty response to the humorous toast offered to “our husbands” by Mrs. Frank G. Smith, after which “the guests were invited to the upper floor of the hall, where they were treated to a very amusing play given by members of the club.”4”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“He was especially willing to put his mechanical skills to use for the benefit of his neighbors.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“To the villagers of Bath, the new man in town seemed like an unusually clever, capable, and accommodating fellow, always ready to lend a hand and ask nothing in return.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“On another occasion, Kehoe purchased eight steers from a neighbor and pastured them in a field of wet clover, violating one of the cardinal rules of animal husbandry as laid out in Dr. C. D. Smead’s standard text Common Sense Treatment of Farm Animals: “All farmers should avoid turning cattle in fresh wet clover or alfalfa when they are hungry.”7 The predictable result of Kehoe’s heedless act was that two of the animals died from ruminal tympany, more commonly known as cattle bloat. After skinning the beasts and selling the hides, Kehoe returned to the seller and demanded “half of what he lost on the steers.” The man very naturally refused, knowing that the animals he’d sold were healthy. A brooding Kehoe, convinced he had been defrauded, stopped speaking to the neighbor.8”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“The newlyweds settled into the Kehoe farmstead, where Andrew continued to work his father’s land, while Nellie served as a surrogate mother to her ten-year-old sister-in-law, Irene. Nellie became a regular at the Tecumseh Catholic church, where Andrew’s family had been congregants. Andrew himself stopped attending after a reputed incident that, in retrospect, seemed like a harbinger of the madness to come. Not long after their marriage, a new church building was erected. To defray the expenses, donations were solicited from the congregants. Asked to contribute $400, Kehoe flatly refused to pay. When the parish priest showed up at his farm to request the money, Kehoe ordered him off his property and, according to some accounts, threatened him with physical force if he didn’t leave at once.6 From that day on, Nellie attended Sunday services alone. The reason for Kehoe’s churlish treatment of the priest is unclear, though it seems an early sign of his future psychopathology, his growing suspicion that his neighbors were out to take advantage of him. Eventually, this belief would blossom into full-blown paranoia.”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

“On May 14, 1912—eight months after his stepmother’s awful death—Andrew Kehoe, then forty years old, took a wife. Her full name was Ellen Agnes Price—“Nellie” to everyone who knew her. Born in 1875, she came from a family of proud Irish Catholic immigrants, whose most prominent member was her uncle Lawrence. A Civil War hero who had fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, Lawrence had grown up in Michigan, returned to his home state after the war, and purchased a wilderness tract in Bath Township, which he eventually transformed into a flourishing 320-acre farm. In 1880, he turned his phenomenal energies to mercantile pursuits, successfully engaging in the grocery, lumber, dry goods, and hardware businesses before becoming a pioneer in the nascent automobile industry as founder and president of the Lansing Auto Body Company. In addition to his myriad enterprises, he served as Lansing’s chief of police and superintendent of public works, did a four-year term as a member of the city council, headed the Lansing Business Men’s Association, and ran as the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in 1916.1 Among his eight siblings was his younger brother, Patrick. Born in Ireland in 1848, Patrick had been brought to America as an infant and spent most of his life in Michigan. Financially beholden to his wealthy older brother, he worked as a farmhand on Lawrence’s spread in Bath before becoming an employee of the Auto Body Company. His marriage to the former Mary Ann Wilson had produced a son, William, and six daughters, among them his firstborn child, Nellie, the future Mrs. Andrew Kehoe.2”
― Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer