The line stretched around the block for his visitation and now that he is gone his wife and co-workers say they can understand the enormity of his care for others.

Ricky Lynn Vaughan helped many in the Pell City area through his keen ability to service automobiles like no other through his Superior Automotive repair and body shop.

“When Ricky passed away, he left a huge void in this community,” his friend and co-worker Jimmy Martin said. “He never met anybody who was a stranger and he helped everybody who he could.”

There was the woman from North Carolina who moved to this area and never went on a trip without Vaughan making sure her car was in repair.

A man to whom Vaughan gave a usable car so he could see his wife who was in a coma.

A woman from Auburn who left town with a trunk full of aluminum after Vaughan repaired her wrecked car, because she told Vaughan about a girls’ mission that sold cans to raise money.

A friend, Kirk Neelan, whose big-rig needed to be on the road on Monday and recalled that Vaughan and his brother, Tommy, worked in 24-hour shifts starting on a Friday to get him on the road so he could earn his wages.

His church, Cropwell Baptist, who received a hand-built train and county fair-worthy Goliath game for a youth event. He handcrafted the lamp posts in his neighborhood.

Through his connections in the stock car world he got VIP tickets for a dying man whose dream was to attend the Gatornationals.

“He always touched people’s lives,” Martin said. “I think that he just loved the people. And he was a perfectionist. He wasn’t satisfied until a car that was brought in was in better shape than however it arrived.”

Martin said that Vaughan, who taught himself to weld when he was a teenager, had the ability to do the work of several people and still know what projects were going on in his shop.

He taught at the Eden technical school for a number of years and held his employees to a very high standard.

Vaughan built stock and race cars for world-class drivers. “He never had just one project going on,” Martin said.

Vaughan, a 1973 graduate of Pell City High School met his wife, Lynn when they were younger and spent 21 years as her devoted husband.

Though he kept busy in his shop most of the time, he always set aside time for his wife. “Sundays was his time for his wife,” she said with a smile. “He was my best friend.”

His welding for automobiles was superb from the start. When he took his first car to a Birmingham show, he was asked by the judge, “Who welded this?”

“I did,” Vaughan responded.

The judge couldn’t believe the quality of one young man’s work. That quality only got better over time, Martin said.

The quality he instilled in his employees continues at Superior Automotive and the employees want people to know that despite his passing, the shop is still open and continues in Vaughan’s tradition of superior service to those who need it.