William Glenn Vaughn
August 20, 1960 --- May 1, 2009
By Glenn Vaughn Jr.,
July 2009
Nancy and I talk a lot about Billy, our youngest son. We still cry sometimes.
We so love the wonderful memories of his bright blue eyes and winning smile and of the joy he brought to our lives and the lives of so many others.
Billy died in his sleep about 4:30 a.m. on May 1, 2009 at his Watkinsville, GA, home where he lived with his wife of two years, Lenora Miller Vaughn, and 10-year-old stepson, Tyler Miller. He was 48.
It will take a while to adjust to the huge gap in our lives, a gap that took nearly a half-century to form.
Billy and Lenora were married May 7, 2007 in Gatlinburg, TN, among a gathering of guests from both families. Billy was proud of his new family and loved the role of being a father to Tyler, then eight. Early on, it was a happy time in their lives. The couple looked forward to having children, a goal Billy clung to most of his years.
There were to be ugly times also.
He was a newspaper journalist. Both his father and mother, Glenn and Nancy Vaughn, have backgrounds in journalism and were so proud of Billy’s skills. He was certainly among the most talented of newspaper reporters and editors. He was a good writer, highly productive and with a remarkably keen eye for newsworthy persons and events. He could put together a complete newspaper on his computer in short order.
Billy enjoyed people and had many casual friends. Most who knew him well loved him. He made them laugh. He was a friend who would always be supportive and would find a way to be helpful. When he walked through a public place in his town, such as a courthouse or a Wal-Mart it was “Hi Billy!” everywhere.
He was kind to both the meek and the mighty and they were kind to him.
However, along what was often a magnificent way, there were periods when he suffered the worst kind of misery a human being can endure. Alcohol addiction grabbed control of Billy’s life and would not let go. In the most recent years he tried mightily again and again to fight off the demon’s grasp, but it was too late.
As good and decent as Billy was, there were times when he was unbearable, even abusive, to those who loved him most. As he learned more about his terrible disease he discovered that his addiction fit into the “mean drunk” category. It surely did.
“Daddy, as bad as you may feel, I feel a hundred times worse,” he told me more than once.
First serious incident was a drunk driving charge in Statesboro, GA., while Billy was a freshman at Georgia Southern University. Nancy and I drove across the state to be there when Billy appeared in court. The judge gave him a stern lecture and told Billy it was going to be “Christmas in July” for him because the charges against him were being reduced.
While at the time we felt good about the judge’s leniency, we eventually came to wonder if there should ever be “Christmas in July” in such cases. Over the years Billy went to court, often with Nancy and me, a number of times.
Our son went to alcoholic treatment centers with high hopes and good faith more times than can be easily remembered, the first being a 28-day stay at Fellowship Hall in Greensboro, NC. On one occasion he spent 14 months at Willingway Treatment Center and Hospital in Statesboro. When he felt strongly that he was ready to leave, he did, though his doctor did not approve.
Billy became interested and active in Alcoholic Anonymous. He listened to tapes and read books until he knew all there was to know about AA’s history and purposes. For a period Nancy and I were active in Al Anon groups, made up of family members of recovering alcoholics in AA.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a really fine organization, greatly under appreciated, we think, just as the seriousness of alcohol addiction is vastly underestimated. If the general public only knew what a horrific disease, yes disease, alcoholism is, we would begin to address this disaster eating at tens of millions of Americans. Billy had long known that. Once early in his AA experience, he showed us a chilling chart that illustrated alcoholism’s certain path. It led only to death. .
Health officials clearly state that, despite the focus on drugs such as cocaine, alcohol remains the number one drug problem in the United States. Withdrawal, for those physically dependent on alcohol, is much more dangerous than withdrawal from heroin or other narcotic drugs.
That says it all.
While there was so much heartbreak in our youngest son’s life, it also was a lifetime of love, laughter and happiness. We are so blessed and thankful that he was part of our family.
As a young person Billy was very mindful of his faith. He attended regular church services with the family at St. Luke United Methodist Church in Columbus, GA. Both Bobby and Billy, then at about the junior high school level, were members of the St. Luke children’s choir.
One day Billy came to his parents and announced that he wanted to transfer to East Highlands Baptist Church. He had gone there a time or two as guest of a close friend. East Highland was more conservative than St. Luke and Billy liked it.
Nancy and I talked about it and agreed we would say to him that if, in six months, he felt the same about a transfer, we would approve. Six months to the day he came to us and said he still wanted to go. He did.
Both Nancy and I believe Billy made his peace with God before he died. He was especially bright and clearly remembered the scriptures he read as a young person. We noted in his personal Bible he had underlined hundreds of verses during his last weeks and months on this earth.
Billy came along, by Caesarian section, as a six-month baby weighing just two pounds. It was August 20, 1960, just a year and 12 days after his brother, Bobby, was born. His older sisters, Valorie and Penny, were then 7 and 4 respectively. We often marveled at the contrast between our well-mannered girls and our boys who seemed, in our memories, like a wrecking crew had moved in.
The doctor kept Billy in the hospital for five weeks, four in an incubator, because he wanted the infant to weigh five pounds before he came home. Our children were very excited about having another little brother and couldn’t wait to get him home. When the new baby finally arrived, 7-year-old Valorie exclaimed, “Is that really Billy?” It became a phrase for teasing in our family.
It was such a joy having two girls and two boys in our young family. Some of our happiest days were in the early 1960s on Wildwood Avenue in Columbus, GA, and later for a year at nearby Seale, AL., where a neighbor called Billy “the hollering boy” because he was so loud.
Living next door on Wildwood was a Columbus legend named Loretta Chappell. A spinster, she had been Columbus Library director for many years and well known in the area as a scholarly historian. She first took a liking to three-year-old Bobby and as often as she could invited him over to play and visit in her parlor. She had plenty of toys and games that delighted children.
It wasn’t long before two-year-old Billy took notice of the relationship and determined he, too, was going to make a move on Miss Chappell. At first he called her “Miss Apple.” In a few days it was he who had our genteel neighbor’s attention. One night, after the children’s bedtime, Nancy noticed that Billy was missing. The inevitable search located him next-door, asleep on Miss Chappell’s lap. He had sneaked out of the house totally naked, and went to play with Miss Chappell’s toys. Bobby, of course, was disappointed that Billy had taken over his friend. Miss Chappell never realized how much this must have hurt Bobby.
Billy’s first switching came while we lived on Wildwood Avenue. The two-year-old got hold of several pennies and, all alone and dressed in a diaper and a tee shirt, he walked out Wildwood, about a block, to Wynnton Road. Then he turned left and walked a half block to a small store on the busy road. By then we were all alarmed and looking. We spotted him heading back toward our house, so proud of himself, with a handful of candy. It was then I switched his little behind. Poor Miss Chappell who witnessed the whole thing didn’t like the punishment at all. Neither did I. And I regret it still.
There were other Billy stunts. One came when he was in the hospital following an asthma attack. In the wee hours of the night while I was snoozing in a chair at our son’s beside, a gentleman awakened me. “Is this your baby?” he asked, nodding to the child he held. Billy had somehow escaped from a tightly bound breathing tent firmly zipped up from the outside. Plus, the tent was placed inside a big baby bed with very high sides. The man said he found the toddler strolling along in an area two wards away.
Asthma was a serious threat for Billy as a toddler. He was under the care of an outstanding father-son team of pediatricians. One morning when Nancy and Billy were in their office, the senior doctor gave her some medicine and said, “take the child home and if he is not better by 6 p.m. we’ll put him in the hospital.” Then he took her aside and said to her, “Don’t tell anyone I said his, but get a Chihuahua.” We did, we got a fine looking little dog that day. When the doctor came by our house (yes, a house call) about 6 o’clock, Billy was much better. That’s a fact. Soon the asthma was no more a problem.
For a time coming home from school (Wynnton Elementary) was a problem for Billy. A school bully would harass and intimidate him on the way home. Our son talked to me about it, I suggested he find ways to compliment him and try to establish a friendship.
The next day Billy said to him, “That’s a nice shirt!” He responded, “That’s tough, Vaughn” and the bullying went on.
Then this papa got some boxing gloves, gave Billy a little coaching and arranged for a match. Unfortunately the bully won. (So much for papa’s ideas.) It was then that Bobby took matters in hand and confronted the bully a time or two. Things returned to normal.
We moved to Athens when Billy was about 4 and a half. That’s when he put a few items in a handkerchief, tied it to the end of a stick and headed out the driveway holding it on his shoulder. “I am running way,” he told me when I asked where he was going. In moments he was back. He was a showman, that Billy.
Some months later a weekend gathering of our family and several adult friends was one to remember. At lunchtime, when the tot/comedian had the rapt attention of a hushed group he related, out of the blue, his experience on entering his parents’ bedroom at a most inappropriate time. There were several long and silent moments.
Four years later the Vaughn’s were back in Columbus.
When he was nearly old enough, Billy was bound and determined to become a newspaper carrier. He would sit on the curb for as long as it took waiting for a District Manager (supervisor of newspaper carriers) to come by so he could inquire about any openings. Finally, he landed the job delivering and collecting in his own neighborhood.
Both Bobby and Billy at first had a tough time of it at Marshall Junior High, formerly an all-black school. The Muscogee School District had recently gone through the throes of desegregation. Billy was a year behind Bobby. Both spent two years at Marshall.
Billy took an early interest in coin collecting, often riding his bicycle or catching a city bus to O’Connell’s Coin Shop, then a mile and a half away in downtown Columbus. He maintained his relationship with the O’Connells the rest of his life. Often, on the way home from school he would hang out at the city library and, as in any other public place or store he visited, Billy soon knew everyone and they knew him.
Once when he was in junior high school, Miss Chappell invited him to lunch at the Krystal where hamburgers are small, but delicious. After Miss Chappell ordered one with small-size French fries and a Coke, she said to Billy: “ I have splurged Billy, now you splurge!” While the growing boy could easily have polished off eight or more the appetizing little hamburgers with super soft buns, he politely ordered the same.
Bobby and Billy in their early teens spent a week on a farm owned by their uncle and aunt, Harold and Margaret Ozburn. There were Ozburn cousins about the same age. They had a time picking peas by the bushel. Then the boys earned money from their roadside sales of the fresh peas.
Bobby had been experiencing a bed-wetting problem and of course, it was extremely embarrassing for him. While sleeping at the Ozburns, he unfortunately drenched his nightclothes. Billy, in the same bed, was awake to witness Bobby’s utter devastation over wetting himself in the bed of kin. Billy had the idea for the boys to exchange their bedclothes. He said to Bobby, “since I am younger than you and they won’t think it’s so bad.” Then he took off and gave to Bobby his own dry garments, and gamely put on Bobby’s urine-soaked ones.
Later that day Bobby was so worried about what had happened, he confessed to Margaret. Having dealt with a bed-wetting problem in her own family, she effectively comforted Bobby at a time when he really needed it.
As far as I know Billy never said a word about it to anyone.
At Columbus High School, Billy was a bit on the chubby side and was self-consciousness about it. The cruelty of some of his classmates’ taunts was unforgivable. Because of the awful torment, he came home many times so upset that he threw up. When Nancy went to the principal, he told her he couldn’t do anything it. Things did get better his last two years. Billy started to turn the barbing around by making fun of himself with fat jokes. Things got a lot better. However, Nancy and I were still taken aback by how cruel were a number of the written comments in Billy’s annual. It is a terrible shame that high schoolers are not sensitive enough to know better.
Billy studied the violin a Columbus high and became, we thought, good enough to apply for a scholarship. He didn’t succeed. Because we lived not far from the Columbus Museum, Billy hung out there enough to develop an interest in art that stuck with him.
Occasionally Billy would ask one of the poorer girls to go with him to a school social function. Whenever one said she had nothing to wear, he would ask his mother to help with a suitable outfit. From time to time he would bring in some stray teenager who needed food and a helping hand. Nancy took one such person, a girl, to a shelter for the night, giving her $20. It turned out she ran away from the shelter before morning.
The money was a no-no.
Billy could be a tenacious job hunter. In one day he went to 39 places in Columbus before he landed a job at Captain D’s. Among the summer jobs he held while in high school was one at an exclusive dining club. He started out washing pots and pans, but was soon working as a helper to the French chef, a real one named Marcel Carlos.
Once while stuffing escargots into small shells, Billy dropped the can and the contents scattered all over the floor. He went to tell Marcel what happened, suggesting that the cost could be taken out of his pay. “Pay the devil,” Marcel fumed, “You get back in there, pick up those escargots and start stuffing again!”
Helping Marcel Carlos prepare and cook gourmet food gave Billy an experience he happily exercised for years to come. He loved to cook and did so often.
Billy studied communications at Georgia Southern University and worked part time at the Statesboro Herald. He met his first wife, Brenda Kelly, at Southern. Her degree was to be in accounting.
In 1981 Billy accepted his first news reporting position at the Coastal Courier in Hinesville, Ga.
Billy and Brenda were married Jan. 22, 1983 at historic Salem Baptist Church not far from where Brenda’s parents who lived near Covington, GA. They made their first home in Meridian, MS, where Billy worked as a news reporter for the Meridian Star.
The marriage was to last almost five years. Billy and Brenda seemed happy. Both loved camping and at every opportunity they set out with their little shaggy dog, Bear, to set up their tent in some lovely park or another.
Billy could find humor just about anywhere. He often phoned to share funny stories about the newspaper, town characters, or city and county officials he encountered every day.
A darker side once developed while Billy was covering a fatal accident in Meridian. Soon after he got from police the name of the victim, a teen-age girl, Billy headed toward his car. A man in a pickup stopped to inquire. When Billy answered his question about who had died, it – shockingly -- turned out to be the man’s daughter.
Billy and Brenda next moved to Gastonia, NC, where he had accepted a job offer from the Gaston Gazette. That is where marital problems surfaced. We never knew all the details that led to their divorce, but it was swift and final. We do know that through subsequent years he felt remorseful and guilty about the failed marriage.
His feelings became apparent when he was working through AA’s 12-step program listing things to be done. Number 8 on that list states, “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing go make amends to them all.”
Brenda was on his list. Billy felt strongly about completing all of AA’s 12 steps. He needed to find her to make amends. Locating Brenda, however, turned out to be difficult. Somehow he did find her at work, but he was not able to make amends to his satisfaction. That unsettled matter seemed to bother him a great deal for years, his occasional comments revealed.
After the breakup Billy worked for the Clayton News/Daily, in Jonesboro near Atlanta. There he made journalism history in Georgia on June 29, 1988. He had written a sizzling series of articles on drug trafficking , using an unnamed source he had pledged to protect. After refusing to reveal the name to Clayton County officials, a judge sentenced Billy to jail, a sentence that was never carried out. The whole affair was widely covered by the Atlanta press and TV and subsequent outcries led to Georgia becoming the 34th with shield law protecting reporters.
The News/Daily, then owned by Grimes Publications, headed by Millard Grimes, soon afterwards was sold and Billy, along with all the other employees, received handsome bonuses. Billy’s share, $5,000, was among the smaller gifts because he was a short timer. Uniquely, and wonderfully, Millard shared windfall profits with employees time and again through the years.
Billy’s journalism skills helped newspapers for which he worked win numerous awards. An honor he was most proud of was the Georgia Press Association’s 1989 Best News Writing Award he received for his story about children learning of their mother’s murder while watching television.
Following the divorce from Brenda, he moved about quite a bit. He left the News/Daily in 1989 to work for the Savannah Morning News where he covered the education beat and wrote enterprise stories for both morning and afternoon editions. He had a small apartment at the beach on Tybee Island.
In 1990 he returned to Statesboro for additional studies at Georgia Southern. Again Billy took a job at the Statesboro Herald where he became state editor. Sandwiching in college work, Billy covered city government while directing the newspaper’s area bureaus that focused on news in surrounding communities. A friend at the Herald had worked in the U.S. Virgin Islands, 50 miles east of Puerto Rico. That area interested Billy very much.
So in 1991 he took a reporting job on the St. Croix Avis, a 147-year-old daily newspaper serving one of the three Virgin Islands. He liked it and did two stints there, becoming assistant editor directing a staff of seven. Twice we transported his cars from the Port of Mobile, via ocean barge to the island of St. Croix.
On returning from the island Billy came back to Columbus to pursue a master’s degree in counseling. It was good to have Billy home. He enjoyed so much his studies at Columbus State University, loved everyone in the department and earned the degree with superior grades.
During that period Billy produced a cookbook on our home computer. Entitled “Nancy’s Cookbook,” the book’s colorful cover features his mother. It was a truly remarkable effort. The cookbook has become a family heirloom because he included family photos and recipes generations will treasure.
Once again, the newspaper life he so loved beckoned. He took a job with the Times in Thomaston, GA. There, just as it had been at every other community he worked, he soon was turning out interesting news stories right and left. Billy was in no time one of the best-known persons in town.
In Thomaston he had a very strange experience when the newspaper for which he worked changed hands. Acting suddenly, the new owners fired every person on the staff from the publisher on down, except for one -- Billy. It seems that a young woman who was editor of a competing paper in town engineered the deal with an out-of-town newspaper group. She, of course, was the new publisher and quickly prevailed upon Billy to stay.
The last newspaper for which Billy worked was the Oconee Enterprise in Watkinsville, adjacent to Athens, home of the University of Georgia. The publisher of the Enterprise is a truly remarkable lady named Vinnie Williams who is 90 years old and still as active as she can be. Early in her career she authored several books.
Besides his devotion to newspapers, Billy continued to have unmet dreams on his mind. All his adult life he had yearned for children of his own, especially a son. About that time his frequent Internet communications bore fruit. He met a lovely redhead named Lenora Miller, who happened to be about to end a second tour in the U.S. Army. She had been on two tours in Iraq. Lenora, divorced, had an eight-year-old son named Tyler. Billy’s widow, Lenora, is a high school English teacher in Clarke County currently working with special students.
He worked for two stints on the Enterprise with a period sandwiched in when he worked for the Lake Oconee area newspaper owned by Mark Smith who also owned other papers including the Messenger in Eatonton where he lived.
Back at the Enterprise Billy again went full steam. After a time it was more and more difficult to keep up the pace. The job became harder and harder for him.
Addicts, who work, cleverly find ways to hide their condition. They often can keep the demon at bay in the early hours of each day. But DT’s are waiting in the wings to come out around 4 p.m.Something has to be done or DT’s, starting with terrible shaking, will tear one apart. That something, be it a whiskey shot or another tranquilizer, must come.
An alcoholic’s reason for drinking changes over time. Early on a person might drink simply to be macho or to get a buzz on. But once the addiction demon takes control, the fear of DT’s is like the fear of death. Billy could keep on working after a drink stopped the DT’s. But only for a while.
Billy had an enormous capacity to produce. Having gathered facts during the day, he would write most of his articles at home in the evening hours, sometimes with a buzz, sometimes closer to being intoxicated, but he kept up the pace Periodically, Lenora would help gather facts for him by taping council meetings or other events.
Billy loved he Oconee Enterprise. Miss Vinnie loved Billy and he genuinely loved her. She devoted her personal column to Billy Vaughn more than once, publicly stating that he was the best editor her paper ever had.
From an editorial in the in the Oconee Enterprise came an exciting description of the exciting man that was Billy:
“…With Billy, this weekly had the best time of its life, because he broke stories where stories didn’t appear. Only they were there. Billy’s sharp blue eyes and instinct ferreted them out…”
“… Billy was drama. His front pages were exciting. He was an incredible photographer…”
When my friend, Mike Edwards, a retired senior writer for National Geographic, and Georgia native, read what Enterprise publisher Vinnie Williams wrote about Billy, his comment was: “Don’t we wish we could have something like that written about us!” Indeed we do.
Billy wanted to stay with newspapers, but as strong as his devotion was, it was not enough. The ever-present demon, with Billy’s life in its deadly grip, squeezed once again. And he could never work as before. He had to leave his job and he had nowhere else to go.
Billy long had a hope to work on a doctorate at the University of Georgia in the counseling field. He started to make an application online. However, when he got to a question, “Have you ever been arrested? Explain,” his heart dropped.
Feeling some better in several weeks, Billy again job hunted. He contacted more area newspapers. But word had gotten around about his drinking problem. He called a few other businesses, still no job prospect.
Lenora drove Billy to Statesboro in South Georgia where he attempted to re-enter Willingway Hospital. When turned down, Billy appealed to the founder and owner of Willingway Treatment Center, Dr. John Mooney. Dr. Mooney, who knew him from a previous stay, responded that Billy could enter only if he agreed to long-term treatment. Billy would not accept those terms.
On his very last day, Billy still looked for help. He telephoned Lenora during her lunch period at school to inquire about insurance coverage should he enter the widely known Hazelden Alcoholic Treatment Center in Minnesota. She told him she thought they could handle it, somehow. It was April 31st.
That night all the years of hard work, along with the damage from his merciless addiction, caught up with Billy. In the early hours of May 1st, 2009, his vital organs just gave out.
He was buried at 4 p.m., May 4, 2009 in a family plot at Parkhill Cemetery in Columbus, GA.
