Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991 TAG: 9103290587
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER/ LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
He was a high-ranking executive at C&P Telephone Co., overseeing 2,000 people, she a scion of one of Virginia's wealthiest and most illustrious families.
The Vaughans left $2.6 million to Virginia Tech for scholarships to students attending Tech's college of veterinary medicine in Blacksburg, the school announced earlier this week.
The size of the gift surprised even friends and neighbors who knew that the couple - she died in 1988, he last year - never had to worry about money.
"Oh my stars," said Mary Allen, a neighbor who attended church with Conan Vaughan, chuckling when she heard the news. "I wish I had been a better friend."
The Vaughans lived so frugally they never bought a washing machine, and he was known to shop around town for the best price on bolts.
"He said, `I like to be just plain Conan,' " Allen recalled. "He didn't put on any airs, but he could buy and sell the whole gang around here."
Vaughan earned two engineering degrees from Tech before graduating in 1927, and he never wavered in his loyalty to his alma mater. He and his wife never had children and were devoted to their pets, especially a cat they adopted when it showed up on their doorstep.
They never felt a need to buy a house, staying in a cozy, modestly furnished apartment and saving their money. She gave her time to charities, at one point becoming renowned for gathering donations of clothing and supplies for patients at Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg.
Known as "The Colonel" to some, Conan Vaughan earned engineering degrees from Tech in 1926 and 1927 and completed Tech's ROTC program. He earned the Bronze Star in World War II, became a colonel in the Army, and stayed active in the Army Reserve through his 60s. He helped start and lead the Army's reserve school in Norfolk.
Vaughan spent his entire career with the telephone company before his retirement in 1971, acquiring a reputation as a no-nonsense manager who "in this non-ostentatious way, accomplished 25 percent more than the average person," said John F. Keeling, C&P's area manager for Eastern Virginia.
Vaughan also acquired telephone company stock and "just saw it go up and up and up" till he was worth more than $2 million, said his brother, Edwin W. Vaughan, a retired physician in Greensboro, N.C.
Meanwhile, his wife inherited some $1.5 million worth of bank stock from her father, an executive of a Richmond bank.
But the Vaughans' fortune never seemed important to them. Edwin Vaughan said the couple decided without much agonizing to give the bulk of it to the veterinary school.
They also left some money to relatives and $100,000 for diabetes research at the Medical College of Hampton Roads. There also was $50,000 for Central Baptist Church of Norfolk, where Conan Vaughan taught Sunday school and was known to crawl around the basement inspecting for termites.
"He wanted to leave his money to Virginia Tech, and the veterinary school was getting started," Edwin Vaughan said. "He thought that would be as good a way as he could to help students out."
Tech officials said the unsolicited gift was especially well placed in the veterinary school, where students often have to borrow $20,000 or so to complete an education in a field where salaries are typically in the $25,000 range.
Some of the money will be used to strengthen the school's minority recruitment program, another favorite cause of Vaughan, who was a longtime friend of the pioneering researcher George Washington Carver of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute.
"There was only one Mr. Vaughan," Keeling said. "If I had to name five people in the world who state their principles and live by them diligently day by day, he'd be one of them."
by CNB