Jun. 9—Given her friendly and gentle demeanor, one would never guess that Tante Vaughn was a bully as a child.
Tante Vaughn
“I would say hateful things,” she admitted in an interview. “Words have power, they have power to kill, to heal, to destroy. I could destroy someone with my words very easily. I would fight kids. I would throw chairs in school, I would be mean to kids. I would walk down the hall, and people would just split the hallway, saying, ‘Oh, she’s coming — who’s she mad at today?'”
Today, she’s not mad at anybody. She is the creator and director of Girls Of Excellence Mentoring, a program that for 10 years has reached out to girls who struggle with bullying and other self-esteem issues and molds them into role models among their peers.
Girls of Excellence is having a relaunching event Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at the Vigo County Public Library downtown. Parents are invited to bring their daughters. A proclamation will be issued (though Mayor Duke Bennett will be out of town), Vaughn will share the story of her life as an ex-bully, and activities, snacks and goodie bags will be offered.
Vaughn started Girls Of Excellence Mentoring because as a child she had mentors of her own.
“I had a lot of problems and I didn’t know how to deal with them, didn’t know who to talk to,” she recalled. “My parents tried to do everything they could, but I took it out on my peers. A mentor showed up in my life and he started talking to me and spending time with me, telling me there’s a different way. There’s a right choice and a wrong choice. It made me think, ‘Wow. I don’t have to act like this.'”
L.G. Wise was her mentor, as well as a couple of people at her church — youth pastor Kevin Ramsby and Amy McBride, with whom she is still friends today.
“They showed me a different light that I hadn’t seen before,” Vaughn said. “They were right there for me.
“I wanted to bring that to the community,” she continued. “There are so many young ladies who just need someone, need a friend, I’m like a big sister they didn’t have. I’m not trying to be a parent. I’m trying to tell them, ‘You can make it over these obstacles.’ It started with one girl and it’s growing and growing. We’ll keep doing it until it’s time for us to stop.”
Vaughn was an angry child. “I had a rough childhood,” she said. “Not because of my parents, but my biological mother was a heroin addict — she had given me to another family, and I just was struggling. I wanted to know why — why would you do this to your child?”
She added, “I didn’t know how to ask those questions, I didn’t know what to do, my parents didn’t know — they did the best they could do. They were great parents, they’re still great parents today, I was just an angry child.”
Her parents helped her achieve a healing moment during her wedding last October, as did her husband Timmy Vaughn. Her biological mother attended the wedding even though she and Vaughn’s parents “probably hadn’t been in the same room for over 40 years.” Timmy told her, “If you want it to be, it can be.”
Vaughn continued, “My mother was all about my biological mother coming. I didn’t want her to be a part of the wedding, but my mom told her, ‘You can walk in with the family.’ It was hard for me to do that, but time heals and wounds heal and I was just thankful that God let that happen.”
At present, Vaughn has 10 girls on Girls of Excellence Mentoring’s roster. Whereas she used to only help high school and late elementary-school students, she has expanded her service to first-graders on up. “There’s a need,” she said. She will set girls up with other counselors as necessary.
Girls of Excellence Mentoring has another program that assists youngsters — in the summer, it sponsors a backpack drive, to give to students along with school supplies as they return to school. That mission begins in August and will operate out of her central office at Highland Church in West Terre Haute.
“I look back now and think, I did those hurtful things to people, just because I was hurting,” Vaughn reflected. “I say, ‘Hurt people hurt people.’ I was hurting and I didn’t know what to do with that hurt.”
Vaughn wants girls in Terre Haute to understand how to channel and transform that hurt.
David Kronke can be reached at 812-231-4232 or at david.kronke@tribstar.com.
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