He is best known as the owner & operator of Tommie Vaughn Ford for more than four decades, & a tireless worker for the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, was a cornerstone of the 1939 Texas A & M National Champion football team. He graduated from Brownwood High School in 1937 and attended Texas A&M University on a football scholarship. In 1939, he helped lead the Aggies to the national championship as the center and defensive squad captain. He earned a bachelor's degree in marketing and finance in 1941. Vaughn was inducted into the Texas A&M Athletic Letterman's Hall of Fame, the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame and the Gordon Wood Hall of Champions in Brownwood. A week after college graduation, Vaughn enlisted in the Army, becoming a pilot in the Army Air Corps. He left the military in 1945 as a captain. Vaughn opened his first Ford dealership in Granbury in 1946. In February 1950, he moved it to Glendale, Calif., after traveling to see the Rose Bowl and visiting a friend, who convinced him a dealership would do well there. Six years later, he moved the dealership to Houston. His first dealership here was on North Main. In 1958, he moved it to its current location on North Shepherd, Janke said. His daughter often tried to convincer her father to move Ford Motor Co. along a freeway to have better visibility, but he refused because he wanted to serve the Heights neighborhood where he had started his business, she said. Now, the dealership is selling to third-generation customers.Vaughn served as chairman of the Houston Automobile Dealers Association and was named one of the nation's most distinguished automobile dealers by Time magazine in 1975.
Survived by wife fo 62 years, Helen Vaughn, daugthers, Kay Holloway & Jeanie Janke, all of Houston. His parents, Mabel and Tom Vaughn, and brother Jack Vaughn, preceded him in death.