Mystery solved: Locals help identify boy in photo

BANGOR – People’s memories are pretty good when you think about it, and they certainly want to help.

The phone started ringing off the hook last Thursday when The Weekly ran a school photo of a 5 1/2-year-old named Shawn from three decades ago.

Lauren and Maggie-Beth Seavey, ages 6 and 7, had found the picture stuck in a chain-link fence outside Fruit Street School in Bangor and were hoping to find out who the picture belonged to.

The little girls need wonder no more.

Beginning at 5:55 a.m., 18 people started contacting The Weekly to say the little boy was Shawn Doll, and several of them had attended Fruit Street with him.

One woman who called, Lisa Richards, had been his teacher.

Friends who called were most helpful in giving directions to find Shawn’s family, saying that his grandparents had lived on Pearl Street and that his parents were Rick and Jacquie Doll.

Indeed, they are.

Rick Doll called to share that Shawn is now 35 and an executive vice president at Bank of America in Belfast.

Shawn is the father of a 1-year-old daughter, “our first grandchild, Arria,” Rick said, “and we’re ecstatic.”

So how did the photo turn up in the chain link fence?

Rick Doll believes it must have fallen out of some things the family took while cleaning out Shawn’s grandmother’s house near the school.

So the mystery is solved, and the two little girls will take the picture to Shawn’s family.

Lauren and Maggie-Beth were pleased to find out what became of the little boy in the picture and to know that his parents still live in Bangor.

“That’s impressive,” Maggie-Beth said.

“It was a fun mystery,” added Lauren.