Just a few years out of high school, Dublin graduate Tanner Vaughn found himself working on safety features for the United States’ stores of nuclear weapons. Then last year, he found a different way of pursuing his scientific passions through opening his own brewery. “My greatest passion is the pursuit of knowledge,” he said. “I just can’t stop learning.”
Vaughn graduated from Dublin in 1997, and after high school he went to Texas State Technical College. He started out in the Brownwood branch studying drafting and design, but then took a break to work for his dad working on his cattle ranch.
“After about a year I realized I needed to finish school, so I wound up going down [to TSTC in Waco] with some buddies and I met one of the professors,” Vaughn said. “We got to talking about random things, and I felt like an idiot. I said to myself, ‘I can learn this and I can have a conversation with this professor about it before I leave.’ It was a challenge.”
So Vaughn decided to go back to school there, instead of in Brownwood, and shifted his focus to laser electro-optics, a field that encompasses the design, maintenance and use of laser technology. Many people who study laser electro-optics end up working with the technology behind LASIK eye surgery, or on specific manufacturing machines, or for the military.
Vaughn wound up on the military technology end. His first job out of college was in Florida, at the aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman, one of the US’ largest military contractors.
There, Vaughn worked under the supervision of a PhD student, studying and building laser systems for missile guidance and target designation. He stayed there for four years, until his supervisor left. “He told me to get out there and explore other places,” Vaughn said.
Vaughn’s supervisor had previously worked in Kansas City at Honeywell Federal Manufacturing, a partner of the National Nuclear Security Administration, so Vaughn interviewed with one of his supervisor’s old coworkers and landed a job there.
For the first five years, he focused mainly on research and development for nuclear weapons — specifically on the safety side. “What we were doing was actually making the weapons safer for us to have here in the US, less likely to detonate when they aren’t supposed to,” he said. “We were keeping people safe and keeping technology safe.”
Next he transferred within the company to work on measurement technology. “I wound up as a field service technician for measurement testers,” he said. “I would calibrate and build testers that measure components for weapon systems.”
Vaughn’s specific area of expertise was shock and vibration — natural forces that can have immediate or gradual effects on how well technology functions.
For much of his 13 total years at Honeywell, Vaughn was traveling all over the country. “I traveled pretty much 48 weeks out of the year,” he said. “I would fly out Monday morning and fly back on Thursday night.”
He spent most of his time on the East Coast, with the exception of a year spent in New Mexico at Los Alamos National Laboratories, and a stint in Buffalo, New York.
“The traveling was for different equipment that I would maintain or help construct,” he said. “I worked with a team of engineers. I was the one that generally did the calibrations on the equipment, but I would also wind up help assembling and testing and development due to some of my knowledge on shock and vibration.”
During Vaughn’s 13 years at Honeywell, another passion was brewing — literally. “One of my buddies that I worked with in engineering kind of got me started with it,” he said. “I always dabbled in chemistry, but I thought building all the brewing equipment would be more fun than actually brewing and all of that. Then I got suckered into studying microbiology and I started doing yeast development in my basement.”
Vaughn studied traditional Belgian brewing methods, like capturing wild yeast from the air. “I did a lot of research and development on yeast at home until I had built various yeast strains in my house,” he said. He also made research trips to Belgium and elsewhere to perfect his craft. “I love studying under and learning from differences between saison brewers and lambic brewers,” he said. “I love the history. I love the stories behind it. I love meeting some of the people that influenced me early on.”
Finally, in November of 2019, Vaughn left his job at Honeywell and founded Pathlight Brewing with his friend David Harris.
Starting out was tough. “We were working 90 hour weeks for the first year,” he said. “It was just intense manual labor.” But pretty soon the partners had built up a solid supply of beers, and were able to open a taproom to the public in July.
Throughout the few months they have been open, they’ve had to find ways to serve people safely. “We’re about 50% capacity right now due to state and county regulations and city regulations,” he said. They also offer beers to go, and sell some in craft beer bars and restaurants nearby.
Pathlight offers a wide range of ales and lagers including wild ales, which are beers that have been aged in oak barrels on wild yeast. Vaughn tries to write new beer recipes each week. In the post-COVID future, Vaughn plans to grow the brewery as much as he can, and potentially open a second tap room.
When he’s not working, Vaughn enjoys working on various mechanics and home improvement projects. “Right now I’m working on restoring a very similar vehicle to what I had in high school — a 1983 Chevrolet C10,” he said. “I got it from a guy up north for next to nothing. The motor was about to blow, so I’m building a new motor right now.”
Working on the truck is a nostalgic project for Vaughn. “I’m building it the way I dreamed it would be in high school,” he said. “And I’m a tinkerer at heart, so I’ll never be done with it.”
Vaughn still lives in Kansas City, but most of his family members remain in Texas. “My sister got married and moved out toward Wichita Falls in a town called Vernon,” he said. “My parents moved up there to be closer to the grandkids.” His mother, Ann Vaughn, passed away in 2007, and his father, David Vaughn, still lives in Vernon.
Throughout his life, one of Vaughn’s greatest challenges has been the fact that he has severe dyslexia. “Throughout school I struggled with learning how to learn,” he said. “My mom actually taught that kind of stuff, so that helped, but my learning disability has always been a hindrance to me. I fight it constantly.”
Vaughn’s advice to Dublin graduates is not to be afraid to learn new things. “Pretty much everything that I’ve done, I didn’t know what I was doing when I started,” he said. “Don’t be scared of not knowing. Just go do it.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other graduates, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.
Erath County officials reported 58 new cases of COVID-19 in the report from Monday night (Dec. 14). Twenty-five of these new positive cases were from within the city limits of Stephenville, nine were from Dublin and 24 were rural residents of the county.
Total deaths since March were reported at 25 by the Department of State Health Services.
Total COVID-19 cases increased by 156 (1,853 to 2,009) in the week from the Dec. 7 update to Monday night’s report, while active cases increased from 378 to 423.
Recovered cases were reported at 1,561 on Monday, up from 1,453 from the week before.
Hospitalizations since March rose from 85 to 90 in the past week.
County officials remind residents that according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, there are things everyone can do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19:
■ Wear a face covering in public
■ Stay six feet apart
■ Wash or sanitize hands often
■ If sick, get tested and stay at home
■ Stay home when possible For detailed information on the evolving COVID-19 situation please consult the Texas Dept. of State Health Services dshs.texas.gov/ coronavirus.
Daily updates can be found at: https://co.erath.tx.us/ DocumentCenter/View/1331/ COVID-19-Erath-Co-Daily-... or on the County Website home page scroll down and click on the “Daily COVID-19 Report”.
—Citizen staff report