Army made this Wichita veteran an X-ray expert

Yahoo

24-04-2025

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – One Wichita Army veteran who dedicated a quarter-century to serving his country served in both the reserves and as an Army X-ray technician.
Wichita veteran Jeffery Vaughn joined the reserves in 1985. After college and working for a department store, he decided to commit himself to the Army full-time.
'They offered me to be an X-ray tech or a paralegal. I knew enough about radiology, and there's a lot of different opportunities you can do, and so that's what I decided, 'this is what I wanted to do,'' Vaughn said.
For the next two decades, he served as an Army radiology technologist. After a year of schooling and training, he was sent to Belgium, where he met his wife.
'I was at the supreme headquarters for the Allied Powers in Europe. That's where I met my wife. She wasn't active duty. She came to visit there. Her aunt was the head nurse at the hospital,' Vaughn said.
He then took his X-ray expertise to multiple stops throughout the U.S., including Fort Benning in Georgia and Fort Campbell in Kentucky. His enlistment ended after that, and it was time to make a decision.
'At the time, (the Army) offered me to go to Hawaii, and I said, 'OK, somebody's got to do it so it might as well be me, right,'' Vaughn said.
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Following Hawaii, he worked at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, and finally at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in our nation's capital.
Vaughn says one of the main lessons he learned as an army radiology technologist is that X-raying soldiers isn't that different from X-raying civilians.
'You learn to treat them just as human beings. And so not just as a soldier. They are human beings, and you have to treat them as such. And if I was practicing now, outside of teaching, I would do the same to all my patients,' he said.
And speaking of teaching, that's exactly what he started doing here in the Air Capital following his Army retirement as a Sergeant First Class in 2010. He spent half a decade at the old Wichita clinic and then attended Newman University, where he currently runs the radiology program.
Vaughn may not have been born in Wichita, but you can tell he's a Kansan at heart, especially when he leaves the Sunflower State.
'When I go back to the East Coast, now I get a little claustrophobic because of all the trees and the mountains and stuff. So when I come back here, it's still wide-open,' he said.
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