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“In terms of the work, you couldn’t apply one man’s style to another. In your quiet moments you just had to sit down and figure out how to adjust.”           By Dale AndrewsNot many people are familiar with the name Debbie Vaughn. For 21 years she has stood in the background providing unwavering support to some of Guyana’s most prominent and controversial figures.Debbie VaughnSince 1991, Debbie Vaughn has been a Confidential Secretary in the office of the country’s top lawmen,from Laurie Lewis to Leroy Brumell. And this is no ordinary feat, for while most CEOs will usually replace incumbent staff with “their own people”, Vaughn is that special person who the past five Commissioners of Police felt comfortable with and trusted to be the leader of their secretariat.Imagine setting appointments and receiving correspondence for a man like Laurie Lewis, who was involved in literally everything, or Henry Greene, a man of many friends.Vaughn admitted this was no easy task, when we sat down last Thursday in an attempt to chronicle her career in law enforcement that started way back in 1982.Originally from Number 78 Village on the Corentyne, Berbice, Debbie Vaughn is the second of two children born to a Postmaster father and a Seamstress mother.Early in her life, her father’s job brought him and his family to the city, where young Debbie was enrolled at St. James-the-less Primary School (now F.E. Pollard) in Kitty.Her secondary school years were spent at the North Georgetown on Woolford Avenue.Even though she grew up around seamstresses (her grandmother, mother and aunts were all in the profession) she never set her mind on sewing. Perhaps it was because she saw her mother toiling away all day and way into the night at the sewing machine while still having to care for her hardworking husband and young children that Debbie frowned upon such a vocation.“My mother used to work hard, really hard. Sometimes we were at home and she wouldn’t even eat. When my father came home he would quarrel, because she was just on the sewing machine. I didn’t want that,” she declared.Like most young girls at that time, Debbie Vaughn dreamt of becoming an Air Hostess (Flight Attendant) but when that did not materialise, she set her sights on the banking field.That too did not materialise since it required having some accounting knowledge and by chance her working career started as a teacher at the St Paul’s Primary and Trinity Methodist Schools.“Even in those days when you sent out an application, you had a problem. So by virtue of that, you take up what came first, and teaching came up first.”Although she did not immediately undertake the trained teacher’s certificate at the Cyril Potter College of Education, she harboured thoughts about remaining in the profession. But she adapted to the task and even did the in-service teachers’ training, which was done in the afternoons at St. Stanislaus College.Assistant Superintendent Vaughn begins another day in customary fashion.Maybe, Miss Vaughn would have continued in the teaching profession, and we even joked that she might have been a headmistress by now, but the massive retrenchment of the early 1980s put paid to that – Vaughn was one of the victims.Out of work, she had to find something to do since ambition was the order of the day for the young women of that period.In those days, many young girls went to “commercial” classes where they learnt secretarial skills.Vaughn had already secured certificates in shorthand and typing, and considered herself an expert in shorthand, reaching up to 80 words per minute.As it turned out, that training was to serve her in good stead in her subsequent career.Did she ever think of becoming a policewoman?“No!” she said emphatically. “Never, never, never, never, ever,” she declaredBut she became the only person in her family to emulate her maternal grandfather by enlisting in the Police Force in 1982.And she never had any trepidation about joining the organisation.“I told myself that I didn’t want to do the general policing, I wanted to do the secretarial work. That was in my mind. But when you came and did the interview and you knew you had to do the training, you resigned yourself to policing and hoped that the break would come. But you had to tell yourself that whatever they put you to do, you had to do your best,” she reflected.In 1982, Lloyd Barker was the Commissioner of Police, and Debbie Vaughn, who was part of Course 124, only had glimpses of him. She never thought that the time would come when she would spend more than two decades serving the office that he once occupied.She shared barrack rooms with now Assistant Commissioner Carol Primo among others.After her training she spent awhile at the Special Branch where she was one of two close protection officers for the daughters of then Prime Minister Ptolemy Reid.After that detail was completed, she went back to the Training School Registry. She soon found that area to be her niche, for she was subsequently sent on a high-speed writing course which was done in conjunction with the Public Service Ministry and University of Guyana.“In those days in the registry, we had people like Miss Yvonne Braithwaite and Elaine Harper and they were the persons who groomed you. Mr. Parris was the Commandant,” she explained.She was soon identified as a person with potential in the secretarial field.“Corporal Headley was my supervisor and she called me and said ‘Debbie put on your hat, you’ve got to go over to headquarters, Miss Braithwaite wants to see you’.”Vaughn explained that she was asked about her background in secretarial studies, and since there were hardly persons in the Force at that time with much shorthand skills, Vaughn was one of two persons selected to go on the course to develop their skills.Ironically, if prominent etiquette professional Joyce Sinclair had her way, Vaughn would have been seconded to the Caricom Secretariat,Authentic NFL Jerseys Cheap, but by that time, Laurie Lewis had become Commissioner of Police and he refused to let her go.“Mr. Lewis never told me that Miss Sinclair had asked for me. It was later on when I met Miss Sinclair, she said, ‘Debbie, your boss doesn’t want to lose you’.”That was the beginning of her career in secretarial work within the Guyana Police Force.Eventually, a few months after completing the course, Vaughn got her break in the Force’s Admin Department, when one of the staffers there went on maternity leave.She was working in the office of then Assistant Commissioner (Admin) R.H. Fraser.A few weeks into her stint at Police Headquarters, the Commissioner sent for Vaughn.“He gave me a dictation; I did the dictation (in shorthand), I did the typo and took it back to him,” Vaughn said, adding that she later learnt that that was her test to see what she could do.Then a vacancy arose in the Commissioner’s office itself and the top cop remembered the young lady who had done his dictation so well and sent for her again – this time it was for her to work in his office.But she did not immediately become his Confidential Secretary.“They had Miss Langford there, she was his secretary, and you had Miss Dodson, who was his secretary.”By that time Vaughn had been promoted to the rank of corporal.After Miss Dodson and Miss Harvey left the Commissioner’s office, Vaughn, who later became a sergeant, was the fittest person to take over as Lewis’ Confidential Secretary.Debbie Vaughn is the perfect ‘background’ person; she does her work and shies away from the limelight despite her position as the Confidential Secretary to the Commissioner of Police.I met her in 1997 when I joined the media and was assigned to the crime beat. Our contact had to do with a call I made to the then Commissioner Laurie Lewis.She did not come across as the usual secretary who shielded the boss or it may be because Laurie Lewis never shied away from the media, because she promptly connected me to him.That was the beginning of a very cordial and professional relationship.Since then, be it Laurie Lewis, Floyd McDonald, Winston Felix, Henry Greene or Leroy Brumell, it is always Sergeant Vaughn or Inspector Vaughn or Assistant Superintendent Vaughn answering the telephone in the Commissioner’s office.She described her early days as Lewis’ secretary as demanding, challenging and sometimes overwhelming.“But you tell yourself that you’ve got to get through the day.” Her philosophy was “it is better to try and fail than not try at all.”“When you’re coming to deal with Mr. Lewis, you’ve got to come to him with a position because he’s not making any decision for you. You come with a position to him and then he will correct you if you are wrong. If you’re coming with a correspondence to him, you’ve got to indicate what action you will take,” Vaughn recounted.“All this time it was like he was grooming you to take up leadership, but he wasn’t giving you the A,B,C grade. It’s from trial and error. That is how you learnt with him. If you failed with Mr. Lewis, well you failed totally,” she stated.Vaughn recalled having the challenge of relating to a wide cross section of people as Lewis’ secretary.“One thing I want to say; I believe that he is the first Commissioner who caused it…whereby a junior rank could speak to a senior officer directly. In previous times a junior rank in this office would not be the one to call an officer with a message from the commissioner. But when he gave you instructions, you had to relate to senior officers, because he is not a man you could go to and say ‘sir I told his secretary.’ You had to speak directly to the officer,” Vaughn said.She agreed that it might have been her success under Laurie Lewis that was the reason his predecessors kept confidence in her, having dealt with her as his personal secretary.Strangely enough, she never thought of leaving the commissioner’s office when Lewis vacated the position to Floyd McDonald, although she noted that her new boss, then, had a totally different style.But she was prepared for anything.From Lewis it was Floyd McDonald. She told me that things toned down a bit for her in the office because McDonald was a totally different person.“The outside relations were less than Mr. Lewis. With Lewis, he was in a lot of organisations; you had to take notes, you had to arrange meetings, a whole gamut.”“I really had to credit Miss Langford, because she showed me how to do many things,”Then it was Mr. Winston Felix’s turn.“He too was a kind of….more than Mr. McDonald… but less than Mr. Lewis. The work stepped back up under Felix in terms of outside relationships because, you remember, he was in some organisations of his own.”Vaughn described Felix as a very forceful Commissioner. “But they all had their different management style, different ways in doing things.” And of course she had to adjust regularly and adapt quickly too.“In terms of the work, you couldn’t apply one man’s style to another. In your quiet moments you just had to sit down and figure out how to adjust.”Of course there were times when she used the experience gained from one commissioner to assist his predecessor, and this was often greatly appreciated.According to Vaughn, what made it easier was that the commissioners all had one common goal and that was to ensure that the work of the organisation was carried out in the best interest of the nation.She is not surprised that she remained in that office for so long.“Maybe they (Commissioners) must have seen the commitment,” she told me, adding that she would sometimes stay up to 10pm to see that a task is completed.“You never really shirked or buckled, you just knew that you had to go through and you went through. And the thing with Laurie (Lewis), even if you finished the job, the job wasn’t finished, even when you got home, because if he wanted anything and he wasn’t seeing it, he would be calling you.”Henry Greene was another story. Second only to Laurie Lewis, in terms of the length of time Vaughn worked with a Police Commissioner.“Mr. Greene’s approach and everything, his whole style, he was a hard worker too, in terms of the job. But I was prepared, because I had the training with Laurie Lewis and it was just a matter of carrying through,” she said.“At the end of the day you had to get the work right with Mr. Greene too. You couldn’t slip up. I don’t think he made allowances for slip-ups. You couldn’t lapse,” she added with a stifled chuckle.“In his book, he didn’t know anything about that (slipping up),” Vaughn said, adding that she was lucky that she never had to feel his wrath.Of course as Greene’s Confidential Secretary, she would have seen the correspondences that were sent out; some for disciplinary measures and censure.“With him you had to have a good memory. You had to have your head on.”When it comes to Mr Brumell, Vaughn said that being his secretary is a lot easier, since she would have known him since he was a junior officer and interacted with him more when he served as a Divisional Commander.Of course the demands have had some effect on her family life, an area that she was a bit reluctant to discuss. She however informed that her two sons were old enough to manage a bit on their own, although she spoke of the assistance she received from her mother in the earlier days.According to Vaughn, listening to her children made her life easier.“I listened to them; you must listen to them. There were the difficult times when they were in their teen years, but at that time my parents were alive. I really credit my parents for the role they played in my life as well as my children’s,” she reflected.She made it easier on herself by setting rules for her children, and like a true policewoman, who valued discipline, that position was easy to maintain.Her sons have grown up now (27 and 18 years old), and there is a little more space for her to operate in her beloved profession.“This work, it was first and foremost in your life, because even the younger ones who were coming along in those days used to say, ‘Miss Vaughn, you like you marry this work, you like you ain’t got no life’,” she said.Although she would have loved to carry a higher rank, she never felt left behind.For her, being in the commissioner’s office, and even as his personal secretary, was no advantage or disadvantage for promotion.Even the persons who I have spoken with, when I mention her name, they would vouch for the dedication the now Assistant Superintendent placed in her work.“I would call myself a survivor. I had to survive,” Debbie Vaughn said in conclusion.