James E. Vaughan

James E. Vaughan was born in Ashland, Kentucky in 1925. He finished high school there in 1943, although he grew up in Van Lear, Kentucky, a coal-mining town, where his father and eight other miners died in a methane gas explosion in 1935. He served in the U. S. Navy (1943-1946), achieving the rank of lieutenant (jg). He completed work on his BA in math and physics at Oklahoma University in 1947. In 1966 he added a master's degree. After managing a commercial broadcasting station in Miami, Florida, he moved with his wife Wanda Lee to an Arkansas farm in 1955, where he spent the next fifty years, writing and teaching. His "Study of Vocabulary Improvement Techniques" was published in the NSPI Journal No. 6 in 1968. He authored more than 60 instructional books, including "Mr. Ready" and "Mr. Phun Phonics." He served as a member of the Arkansas Educational Telecommuniations Commission (1980-1988), and played a major role in establishing a statewide academic competition known as "Quiz Bowl." His software proram for Apple II computers, "Ceres: A Space Odyssey," was included in NASA's "Second Edition of Software for Aerospace Education" in 1990. His first work of fiction won the Heartland Writers Award for Contemporary Fiction in 1993. His personal memoir, "Bankmules," was published in 2003 by Jesse Stuart Foundation. "The Alchymist and The Silurist", and its sequel, "Diana and Leo," are his first published works of fiction.