A parent sat next to this grandparent, while we waited and watched our girls practice their swimming for the Newton County Middle School swim team. She was Mrs. Ginger Vaughn, and we struck up a conversation that continued a few days later in an interview for this column. My GPS had led me out to Lucern Congregational Methodist Church, where Ginger serves as the Secretary, Youth Leader, and Pianist for the church. She told me her story, as we sat in her office, full of VBS preparations for June.
Ginger Michelle Vance Vaughn was born November 15, 1984, to Milton and Jeannie Jones Vance, the little sister to Michael Vance, who lives nearby and is a real “cowboy” who works on a cattle ranch in Forest, Mississippi. Michael has a son Hunter and a grandson aptly named Stetson. Their father, a building contractor, still builds houses at times, and their mother was a secretary in the Communications office at East Central Community College until her retirement last year.
Ginger has always attended the church she and her family are faithful to now. She told me, “When I was little I was…made to go, and I’m grateful for that now.” She recalled, “This has always been my church. My grandparents were part of the founding of this church in 1930.” Her maternal grandparents, Rev. and Mrs. Jim Jones from Sebastopol, were more Pentecostal. As we talked about church attendance, she added, “I remember full pews. I’m talking about our small country church and others like it. Now they’ve either left to go to bigger churches in town or to not go at all.”
Her family sang at churches and other events. Ginger, her mother Jeannie Vance, Aunt Judy Moulds and Uncle Jimmy Jones, and cousins Sharlie and JoLyn Moulds made up the group. Sharlie played piano, while Grandfather Jim played the omnichord. Rev. Jones had taught himself to play this unusual instrument. I asked about Ginger’s piano lessons. She replied, “I started taking piano at age seven. Mrs. Jean Germany was my teacher. Sharlie and I both took lessons about five or six years.” She added, “Music speaks to my heart.”
Ginger’s church is Methodist, so she was christened and dedicated as a baby. At age seven, though, she told me, “I felt the Holy Spirit that day and went to the altar and asked Jesus to come into my heart.” She was baptized by immersion in a swimming pool. The church now has a baptistry. Her salvation story runs smack dab into her love story, as she continued by telling me of meeting her husband Wade and of the spiritual experience she had before they were married. “I was 22, and he was 26. We were not married yet. He had an aneurism of the brain. They put him in a coma, and the doctors said it was touch and go.”
She continued, “I kept a journal and prayed, begging God to save his life. One night I had a dream and Jesus spoke to me. I believe it really was Jesus. He told me to dry my tears, that Wade was going to be fine and he’d be awake soon. He woke up two days later.” This all happened during Christmas 2006. He had bought a ring, planning to propose on New Year’s Eve. After he woke up, he did propose, and we were married September 15, 2007. “This was the beginning of my path with God, really trying to do what He wants me to do.”
Keeping her initials, GMV, Ginger married Wade Vaughn, son of Ralph and Vicky Vaughn of Lawrence, Mississippi. Wade is a truck driver for ADD Trucking of Sebastopol, trucking all over the Southeast. He is usually only home Saturdays and leaves again Sunday after church. She told me, “Wade is my rock, the calm to my storm. That’s what I tell him all the time. He’s our protector, our voice of reason. He’s a Christian with good Christian values. We are raising our kids in church, trying to put them on the right path following God and being good, compassionate Christians.
Those children are Emma, twelve, born July 16, 2009, and the twins Ellie and Eli, six, born April 1, 2016. Emma wanted them all to have “E” names, but Ginger also assured me that all three are family names. Besides being on the swim team, Emma, in the seventh grade, plays trombone in the NCMS Band and is a member of the church youth group. The twins play T-ball, are active in church, and have Ms. Beth Lang as their kindergarten teacher at Newton County Elementary School. They all look forward to Vacation Bible School June 15-17th.
Ginger played the trumpet in the Newton County High School Band, was a member of the BETA Club, Secretary of the Student Council, and graduated from NCHS in 2003. Continuing on to ECCC, she earned both her Associates degree in Science, and her Surgical Tech degree in 2005. She worked in the Surgery Department at Anderson’s Hospital for three years until Emma’s birth. She then left to be employed at Family Medical Group in Union, where she worked in the lab for Lab Corp. She reported, “I loved it. It was like a family. I still go back to visit.”
In 2014 Lab Corp left so she decided to stay home with Emma. She did some substitute teaching for the Union schools between 2014 and 2016, until she had the twins. In 2019, through her friend Nona Russell, she met a health insurance agent, Brent Harrell, who offered her the opportunity to become an independent agent for his company. She and Ms. Russell, of Walnut Grover, have their insurance office in Forest on Main Street.
Ginger shared, “Medicare was the big reason I got into insurance. My 92-year-old grandmother’s Medicare had gotten messed up because of a phone call from someone claiming to be from Medicare. So it made me realize that other people were probably going through the same thing.”
I asked how long she had been doing this, so she explained, “I started the summer of 2019. The twins were four and would be going into kindergarten the next year. A wonderful lady in the community, Lisa Taylor, kept them summers and throughout the year when I had to go in to work. I can do a lot from home.”
Ginger and the church are planning for Vacation Bible School, as are a lot of others, but she also told me of an end of summer “Back to School Bash” the church always plans for the children to enjoy, with a water slide, games, food, music, etc. They are trying to provide all the things a good church and community can to promote good Christian values in the children and their parents. Ginger, her family, and her church are examples of many others doing the same things all across Decatur and the surrounding areas. God bless them!
Live for Jesus! He’s coming soon! You may contact me at lagnesrussell@gmail.com or 601-635-3282.
