Scott Douglas Vaughan

Vicki and I went out to dinner last night, Monday night. We went early - at 5:30 p.m. - because we had not eaten much since breakfast and we were starving. We didn't want fast food. We wanted table service - something prepared fresh - and we wanted peace and quiet. As expected at 5:30, the restaurant was pretty empty. On the way to our table, we passed six young couples all with babies. We figured them for neighborhood friends or friends through work or church. Reaching our square little table, I chose to sit to Vicki's right rather than across from her. Sitting this way gave us both a view of the restaurant including a table right in our line of sight - about 6 feet away. At the table was a boy we guessed to be about 18 and a girl about the age of 10. Hearing them refer to their mutual parents, we deduced they were brother and sister. We weren't really eavesdropping, but it was just too precious to ignore. He removed his mobile telephone, called a number, and sai...

My maternal grandmother, Carolyn Holmes Yarbrough, was a public school teacher for more than 35 years. She died in 2003 at the age of 92 frail but not invalid and certainly of a good mind. If you didn't know her, I wish you could have known her. We called her Mema. She was not a "crawl up in the lap for a hug and a story" grandmother (I had another one of those). She was the "help me figure out this problem" grandmother. She was educated and smart in a math and science kind of way. She was an academic. As a widow in her 50s, she went back to college and finished her degree work at North Georgia College. That enabled her to teach Algebra, which she absolutely loved. She also loved her azaleas and all of her other plants, and she knew the scientific name of them and why they grew the way they did. Plants were her never-ending science project. She kept a daily journal that included the day's weather, important sports scores, and a note about anything...

Beth, left, and her friend, Catherine Last week, I opened an email from Beth from Lake Jackson, TX. She found my email address on my website and this is what she wrote: "I've read your two books to a friend who is 90 and blind. We have enjoyed them so much! Your books have brought us so much joy. Some days, she laughs so hard that there are tears rolling down her cheeks. We were hoping that there will be another book soon. Thank you so much for your books. From two huge fans, Beth and Catherine" In the photo, Beth is pictured, left, and Catherine is pictured, right. I have never been to Lake Jackson, TX, but it is south of Houston and west of Galveston along the coast. I've never met Beth and Catherine. But, I will be meeting them this Friday at 4 p.m. ET. By use of conference call, I will be reading them a chapter titled "Spin The Bottle" from my new book, Hickory Trail , due out in October 2018. I've written about two-thirds of the book...

On Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, Richard Evans Sale, 83, died in Florence, SC. I saw the announcement of his death in the November 2017 issue of The Baptist Courier, the monthly newsmagazine of South Carolina Baptists. I immediately went to Legacy.com to read Rev. Sale's complete obituary. You can read it here . In short, Rev. Sale was a Southern Baptist pastor, but will forever be known for his 40-plus years as both a hospital and a law enforcement chaplain. He was a graduate of the FBI Academy's Chaplain Training Course in Quantico, VA. Within his obituary, it mentions Rev. Sale's 60 years of service to the local church, his community, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Within that long descriptive paragraph, there is the mention that Rev. Sale " was a member of the Kiwanis Club . " Kiwanis, as you may know, is one of our country's historic community service organizations born during World War I when suburbs were being created and service organizations ju...