Brush with Grace: Zachariah Vaughan Gives Refugees a New Start

Written by Melissa Karen Sances
Photos by Nikki Gardner Photography

Sponsored by Valley Home Improvement

Published in Northampton Living (December 2022)

This is a story about grace. Not religious grace, per se, although there’s an element of spirituality. Not Grace Paint and Tile, specifically, although the company plays a large role. At its heart, it’s about a guy who lost his way for a while, who has become a mentor to Northampton High School athletes and Afghan refugees. It’s about his most recent crew of painters, football stars and former soldiers, who didn’t always understand each other but knew that when lunch rolled around, they would lay down a drop cloth, take off their shoes, and share a pot of stew. And it’s about his community, our community, that emerged from isolation eager to merge worlds.

There would be no story if Zachariah Vaughan didn’t decide to make amends. While growing up in Northampton, he got into trouble that felt unredeemable. After attending 12-Step meetings and doing some serious soul-searching, and felt he had a “civic and karmic debt to repay.” But he was advised to leave. “After the mess you left here, you need to move to a different country,” he was told.

He had to stay. He had to see.

Today Vaughan is known for his eye for color. On a rainy day in October, he crouches in an above-garage apartment to touch up pale yellow trim. Florence Paint & Decorating Center recommended him to the owner for his attention to detail, but she also appreciates his sense of humor. He and his go-to guy on this job, Rodney Rewis, are old friends that have worked together for six years. The owner appreciates their ease with each other, as well as their kindness to Noodles. He’s a 15-year-old rescue cat who blindly bumps into walls sometimes, but always finds his way up their ladder.

Rewis poses for our photographer. “I should have been a model,” he deadpans, roller in hand.

“You should have seen the ‘Zoolander’ poses I did downstairs! I showed her my ‘Blue Steel,’” Vaughan replies, alluding to Ben Stiller’s photogenic, pursed-lipped look.

The jokes are over when Vaughan’s cell phone vibrates, and then his ring tone … quacks loudly, almost piercingly. It may be for the best that Noodles is hard of hearing.

Now back to work.

Eight years ago, Vaughan founded Grace Paint and Tile to “give the disenfranchised a leg up.” Within two years his enterprise took off, but it was hard to find enough painters to meet the demand. In early 2020, he wrote up a business plan to employ vocational students, inmates and veterans, but it was stymied by COVID.

That spring an NHS football player heard Vaughan was hiring. Brett Holden had grown up doing carpentry jobs with his dad and needed summer work. “He really took me under his wing,” says Holden, now a sophomore at the University of Rhode Island. “He taught me quite a bit. A lot of bosses don’t take the time to do that.”

Holden was so impressed with Vaughan that he started recruiting fellow team members for the painting crew. Soon Yano Porter, Kavan Powers and Eddie Sarafin joined him as Vaughan’s “Hamp All-Stars” in his summer line-up.

Then came the big break at the Big Y. Vaughan was grocery shopping when someone tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I’ve seen your vans all over town.” Vaughan was used to being spotted on the road. Sometimes people would see the company slogan on the van – “Have a graceful day!” – and honk or yell out the window, “You too, man!”

Today the tag line on his company sweatshirt had given him away. Judson Brown, a volunteer at St. John’s Circle of Care in Northampton, explained to Vaughan that his organization helped Afghan refugees resettle in western Massachusetts. They all needed employment. Could Vaughan help?

“How many have you got?”  he asked.

Last March he hired two Afghanis, and by June “the consortium” had six more members. [Their case worker asked that they not be identified for privacy reasons.] In another lifetime, a training consortium had helped Vaughan start again, and now the community rallied around him. Catholic Charities, the Center for New Americans, and The Literacy Project stepped up to help the eight Pashto-speaking refugees learn English. All the understaffed agencies, he says, “were really stretching out to work together,” but it wasn’t a strain. The stretching felt good.

Vaughan wasn’t sure what to expect when the Hamp All-Stars met the consortium. The kids could be “relentless” with each other, and the refugees were adults who came from a culture that valued elders.

The merger was so successful that in one summer, he caught up on two years of backlogged jobs. And in the process, the groups learned from each other.

Yano Porter, now a sophomore at the Illinois Institute of Technology, appreciated the refugees’ graciousness. “They always brought food for lunch and they would sit with us and show us how to eat it,” he says. The Afghanis made pots of stew and rice, and would wash up and pray before inviting the All-Stars to join them. In turn, the athletes patiently taught them to paint, largely by miming the techniques.

Vaughan’s operation manager, Erin Scully, notes that despite the language barrier, the groups joked with each other and forged a genuine bond. One day the site leader, All-Star Eddie Sarafin, informed her that the consortium “needed to observe their prayers.” He twirled a finger in the air like it was time to wrap up work and shouted, “Hey guys! Time to prayer up!”

Back at today’s fall photo shoot, Vaughan and Rewis are on their own. The All-Stars are at school, and the refugees have relocated for the winter. (Noodles is still game.) Vaughan has already talked up the consortium to Attorney General Maura Healey, whom he met after she spoke about rebuilding broken systems. 

He knows all about rebuilding.

And that brings us back to grace.