Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind to close In the 1950s, Ralph Shelman's public school didn't have the tools to help him. Shelman, who's blind, was ridiculed and taunted by his peers in Richmond.

"I and my family knew I had the intellect to be able to learn, but I just wasn't in a setting where I could get it," he said.

Shelman soon transferred to the School for the Deaf and Blind at Hampton.

When the school's doors close forever at month's end, Shelman said, he's afraid that disabled students will face the situation he was in more than 50 years ago: attending public schools that simply aren't equipped to help them reach their full potential.

"We grew up as brothers and sisters there," she said. "The community is losing a historical place, a place where a blind or deaf child could go to learn a sense of self," said Frances Durham, who graduated from the school in 1979.

"They've been trying to close it for 42 years, and now it's finally done," she said with a tone of resignation.

Patricia Shepperd Brown taught at the school for 44 years and is visually impaired. She said she was concerned about the education that students would get when they transitioned to public schools.

"It's a beautiful campus," she said. "It's like home. But things change, and I pray that things will change for the best."

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Daily Press