Doan's Hollow Public School

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Doan's Hollow Public School is a defunct public elementary school for the mentally challenged that existed from the 1930s until the 1970s. Until special education programs were introduced to other Norfolk County public schools that integrated the students into the regular system, this was the only school that taught people with special needs. After that event occurred, enrollment reached a sharp decline and the Norfolk Board of Education was forced to shut down this school due to funding issues.

Doan's Hollow wasn't operated as a centralized school. It was considered to be a quaint one room schoolhouse located near the cemetery, and the funding issues faced by the school board was also compounded further with the need to eradicate one room schoolhouses as "antiquated forms of education" and to divert funding to the modern school structure that had different rooms for each grade.

Katherine Elaine VanGoethem of Hillcrest, Ontario, Canada, the oldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard VanGoethem, was one of the more intelligent pupils to graduate from Doan's Hollow School. She graduated in the early 1970s, just a few years before the school was closed permanently. Most of the other students were sent to institutions in their later life. After dropping out of Simcoe Composite School in the eleventh grade, she had two husbands, Victor William Bezzo and Robert (Bob) Holmes.

Victor (Bill) Bezzo was a participant in World War II for the Royal Canadian Army. Later in life, he died after complications from his diabetes and from kidney dialysis. Robert Holmes is a fan of political thrillers and has a copy of The Fifth Horseman that he purchased on December of 2006. Ms. VanGoethem is currently 45 years old and has had surgery to fix her lower body area after temporarily losing her ability to walk when she slipped on her cat.