March 14 was a special day in the halls of Fairfield Elementary:  Ms. Vaughan was turning 75.

Vaughan, who has been with Virginia Beach Schools for 34 years and who has two daughters in education (Jennifer Thorpe, a second-grade teacher at Kempsville Elementary and Kimberly Ritter, a media specialist at Young Park Elementary in Norfolk)  is a school favorite.

“Mrs. Vaughan is like a magnet for students; they just gravitate to her,” said Fairfield principal Doug Knapp. “We actually make them earn ‘Ms. Vaughan time’ and they work hard to do that.”

As a tribute to their beloved staff member, administrators and faculty at Fairfield donned soccer ball buttons bearing the number 75 in large type.

Why a soccer ball, you may ask?

Vaughan has played her favorite sport on a community soccer team for the past 25 years. She became interested in the sport when her own boys played on travel teams and one of the parents wanted to get a women’s First Team going in the area. She started playing for the “Grasskickers” women’s team in the summer of 1981.

“And I loved it,” Vaughan said.

Vaughan would later join the Virginia Beach Women’s Soccer Association and the Tidewater Women’s Association.  Only in the past couple of years – when she felt like she just wasn’t as fast – has she decided to change gears.

Not that she was slowing down.

Instead of soccer, Vaughan asked one of the school’s substitutes, Kearstin Kelly, an avid runner who had participated in several marathons, to train her to run. She quickly caught on and for the past two years she has developed as a competitive runner.

Entering the Shamrock’s Operation Smile Final Mile 8 K Race for the second year in a row was a huge feat and one that makes her proud. Not only did she beat last year’s time by three minutes, but she also finished first in her age category this year with a final time of 1 hour and nine minutes.

Vaughan shares her same focus and energy to the students in her classes.

When asked why she think kids relate to her so easily, Vaughan smiles and credits a Reader’s Digest article she read many years ago. In it, a man and a child were walking. The child kept zig-zagging behind him so the man had to repeatedly remind him to stay on the path. The child smiled up at the man, but soon found himself zig-zagging again. After several reminders, the child finally looked up at the man and asked, “Where is the path?”

“That’s when I came to realize that when children understand what we want, they will work hard to give it to us,” Vaughan said. “We need to pull them in when they veer out again. For the most part they want to please us, so we need to remember and have patience to help them understand what we are looking for. I tell them I’m not perfect, no one is and all of us are here to learn.”