Editor's letter: What we remember, what we forget

last updated 8 January 2015

Chances are good that you’ve never heard of Andrew Kehoe—nor does he merit remembering. On May 18, 1927, he committed one of the worst massacres in U.S. history when he blew up a school in Bath Township, Mich. Kehoe killed his wife and firebombed his own farm just as charges he’d laid beneath the school building exploded, killing 37 elementary school children and two teachers. Then he drove to the school in a car full of shrapnel and detonated that, killing three adults, a schoolboy, and himself. Kehoe’s diabolical act seized the nation’s imagination until, three days later, Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris to complete the first solo trans-Atlantic flight in history. “We measure heroes as we do ships, by their displacement,” former Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes said. “Col. Lindbergh has displaced everything.”

In an imperfect echo of that coincidence, last week’s massacre in Aurora, Colo., was followed this week by a remarkable outpouring of love and admiration upon the death of America’s first female astronaut, Sally Ride (see Obituaries). Clearly, nothing can displace the pain of those who lost their loved ones in that cinema. But history suggests that once the alleged shooter, James Holmes (see The last word), has been exhausted as an example of human depravity, social isolation, mental illness, or a nation’s mania for weaponry, he will be forgotten, just as Kehoe was. It’s Sally Ride that we’ll remember, a woman who found joy in reaching for the stars and who was committed to inspiring others to do the same. For all our anguish now, there’s hope in the certainty that such achievement always ends up outshining nihilism.