Bath School District Disaster

[hnpcc]

I'd never heard of the Bath School District Disaster until it came up during a forum discussion about the guy in Texas who flew his plane into the tax office as an earlier example of someone annoyed at paying taxes (amongst other things) who took a pretty extreme means of making that clear.

This link to a reproduction of a pamphlet published just after the disaster commemorating the victims and explaining - as much as you can - the lead up to the tragedy is really great though. As a period piece it's fascinating. As a reminder that crazy people have been around forever it's kind of chilling.

Comments

[kirstenfleur.livejournal.com]

Dear God, that's horrific.

[hnpcc]

It's certainly interesting in how modern it feels. Crazy guy objects to paying tax and blows up something in protest.

Oh and murders his wife and few other prominent citizens for good measure.

Reading the pamphlet though, what's interesting is the level-headedness of the writer towards the increased property tax - yes, it's higher for a couple of years, but at the end of it we'll have a local school which will benefit the community at large. That sentiment seems to have gone missing in some places I think.

The other interesting thing was how many of the kids were either a lot younger or a lot older than their grade - obviously there was more leeway and kids would come and go according to the amount of work needing to be done on the farm.