Former radio personality Ben Vaughn dies at 66
Well-known Nationwide Insurance agent, community activist, and former WBMC news director Ben Vaughn, 66, died from a heart attack at his home Sunday night. He is survived by his wife Carolyn.
“This is certainly a big loss for the community,” said longtime friend Thorold Ramsey. “He was a great man and one of my best friends.”
Born in DeKalb County in 1938, Vaughn grew up in the Centertown community and graduated from Centertown High School in 1956. He entered the U.S. Army soon after.
Vaughn began his professional career in the early 1960s at WBMC radio where he served as the station’s news director and accumulated a number of awards.
“He was the best news director ever to have been employed in McMinnville,” said Ramsey, former owner of WBMC. “He was a perfectionist and was never known to make an error. They don’t make ’em like Ben Vaughn anymore.”
After nearly 10 years with the station, Vaughn left to take a post as a trust officer at City Bank and Trust, where he worked shortly before becoming involved with the insurance business at Farm Bureau.
In the early ’70s, he joined Nationwide insurance and operated the local Nationwide affiliate for a number of years. As he climbed the corporate ladder, his work with the national company took him across Kentucky and Tennessee.
Vaughn returned to McMinnville in the late ’90s and took back over the local Nationwide affiliate in Northgate Shopping Center. He subsequently opened a branch office on Beersheeba Street.
Friends described Vaughn as being as dedicated to his community as he was to his family and business ventures. A member of Rotary Club of McMinnville, he has held several leadership positions with that organization, as he also did as a member of McMinnville Jaycees.
He served as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce board of directors in 1973, and was a current member of the board and chairman of its Existing Industry and Governmental Affairs Committee at the time of his death.
“Ben Vaughn was a person always of excellent integrity, unimpeachable integrity. He was someone I really admired,” said county commissioner and radio personality Bill Zechman.