Thomas Karlton Vaughan

1955 - 2020

Thomas Karlton Vaughan
February 20, 1955 - November 23, 2020
Thomaston , Georgia - Tom was the youngest of the four children of Dr. Robert Howard and Mary Percy Vaughan of Columbus, Georgia. He attended neighborhood schools before graduating from Hardaway High in 1973 and heading north to the University of Maine. Later he studied nursing and anesthesiology, earning a Physician Assistant degree at Emory University, and worked for many years in the operating room with his father and other surgeons. In 1983 he married Susan Wicker with whom he had his only child, Matthew Thomas Vaughan, in 1990. Tom worked in Columbus and Albany, Georgia, before returning home to support his parents in their last years.
For many years, he shared a home in Midland with Rosa Garcia and her family before buying a house in Thomaston, Georgia in 2017, where he enjoyed farming and casual animal husbandry until he contracted terminal cancer. He was receiving hospice care at home when he was struck by a car as he was walking to his neighborhood store. He died on November 23.
Although born in the land of cotton with one foot planted amid the woods and wildlife of the deep south, Tom set his other foot firmly on the seashore of his Yankee mother's beloved Small Point, Maine. He grew up catching snakes and turtles on the tributaries of the Chattahoochee, and eels and flounders (bare-handed) in Casco Bay. Besides cats and dogs, his pets included rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, goats, chipmunks, weasels, beavers, raccoons, fish, and every variety of amphibian and nonpoisonous reptile. Memorable pets included Sharpie, a Maine sparrow hawk, Cooney, a young raccoon who rode loose in Tom's VW beetle from Georgia to Maine, and Scooter, a flying squirrel who slept in his shirt pocket. Tom loved cooking, and traveling, and staying in touch, mostly via out-of-the-blue, hour-long phone calls, with the many, many friends he made throughout a life foreshortened, in his words, by having "rode his horse a bit too hard."
Amidst the travails of the Covid pandemic, Tom traveled once more to Small Point, where he was feted by friends, family, and Matt and his bride-to-be, Erin. He so savored this last visit.
He was also grateful for the care and company of the Thomaston Hospice staff, who called him Mr. Tom.
Tom has planned one last visit to Small Point, where his ashes will join those of his parents. In lieu of flowers, raise a glass to an unforgettable friend who treasured the times you shared.