VAUGHAN, ETC NEWSLETTER
January 1987
EDITOR: Verna Baker Banes
Page 4
From: LOUELLA SMALL, 1324 NE 196 Ave, Portland, OR 97230
PORTLAND OREGONIAN, TUESDAY JUNE 17, 1986
STRENGTH,
By WARD SINCLAIR
LA Times-Washington Post Service
The miles traveled now reach into the tens of thousands; uncounted nights in austere country motels
stretch into a long numbing blur: the grease-heavy food of the crossroads cafes is devoid of taste. But
that has been the price of admission to an extraordinary discovery.
The discovery is really just an asterisk to a news
reporter's assignment since 1981 -- covering American
agriculture while the industry has been shaken to its roots by economic uncertainty.
There is great pain in the countryside -- a pain that comes as much frm the erosion of traditional
optimism as from the wrenching loss of farms passed from generation to generation with stewardship
and love. Asking the questions that unleash a farmer's tears of grief over the kitchen table is often more
than an outsider can bear.
Wherever the reporter goes in farm country, doors
swing open. There is unabashed eagerness to tell
the story of an eroding rural structure; a huge wish that the nation as a whole, and Washington in particular,
would listen and learn and act to keep stability in agriculture.
Yet for all that pain, a certain reassurance emerges.
One returns from each of these journeys moved by
a sense of country and people that speaks of strength, indomitable spirit and adaptability, a special side of
the American character. It speaks of a continuing belief that right must always triumph.
Beyond the spirit are the people themselves, an army of unforgettable human beings – some of them
farmers, many of them not. All are related to the business of growing food and caring for the land; many
are people who are the power of the country, fighting unsung battles and winning unsung victories. From
the memories and old notebooks, these are a few of those people.
The black guru
As soon as the car carrying a black man named Thomas Vaughans turned up the bumpy lane, the white
farmer and his wife were out of the house waving a greeting. When the car stopped, the couple clustered
around Vaughans' window and chattered like magpies. An old friend had come back; the excitement was
palpable.
Inside, around the kitchen table, there was coffee
and small talk and a lot of laughter. Thomas Vaughans,
it became clear, had made a difference in the life of this struggling Arkansas farm family. There seemed to
be no limit to the appreciation and respect that he had won with his knowledge.
This family had been going deeper and deeper in
debt, growing cotton and soybeans that brought no price,
when they crossed paths with Thomas Vaughans. He showed them, step by step, how to turn a truck garden
into a lucrative alternative that would be their salvation. The debts were paid off; solvency become the norm.
At another farm, run by a large black family, Vaughans
got a similar greeting. He was here on this warm
winter morning to show them how to prune the blackberries he had counseled them to grow to augment their
income. Father, mother, sons and daughters crowded around as Vaughans carefully snipped one cane after
another.
A day with Vaughans in the country south of Pine
Bluff turned out to be a moving experience, for wherever
one went with this modest man, it was to be drawn into an aura of love and understanding. Black or white,
the farm families he visited saw Vaughans as a special person. His stock in trade was knowledge, and he
handed it away unstintingly.
For years, Vaughans was a county extension agent
in the delta country between Memphis and Little Rock.
He showed poor farmers how to produce cash crops, helped them set up cooperatives and farmer's markets.
He worked to help his clients find out about state markets. Vaughans showed them how to survive.
Then he was promoted to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a formerly segregated school, and
assigned as the extension horticulturist for a 14 county area surrounding Pine Bluff. There he has done on
a wider basis what he began in one small delta county.
Thomas Vaughans would never say so, for that was not his way, but his quiet work has changed people's
lives in inspiring ways. There have been no headlines and no testimonial dinners. Just an aura of love and
appreciation on country lanes in Arkansas.
MELTING POT GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY
400 Winans Ave, Hot Springs, AR 71901
-- Dedicated to assimilation and preservation of historical & genealogical documents. Quarterlies with free
queries. Write for membership cost.
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INDEX TO VAUGHAN/VAUGHNS in McLennan Co TX, 1870 census (number at right edge = microfilm sheet)
Robert 27 m b 64-149
Robert 45 m b 64-149
Rosina 48 f b 64-149
Annie 27 f w 13-79
David 38 m w 13-79
Henrietta 27 f b 65-157
Horace 26 m b 65-157
Jane 30 f w 72-263
Martha 59 f w 72-263
Susan 20 f w 79-361
Patrick 29 m w 72-263
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