Vaughnam Adolphus Sims (1891-1950)

From the 1935 Bench and Bar of Florida.

  A fairly recent discovery as far as strange names are concerned, Polk County, Florida resident Vaughnam Adolphus Sims was a veteran of WWI who would become a prominent figure in Lake Wales, Florida. An attorney based in both Georgia and Florida, Sims served as City Attorney for Lake Wales for several years and would also be elected as that city's mayor.

   Born in Gwinnett County, Georgia on May 3, 1891, Vaughnam Adolphus Sims was the son of Alfred and Neoma Sims. Vaughnam Sims would attend the University of Georgia, graduating in the class of 1917 with his Bachelor of Laws degree. He would begin the practice of law in Winder, Georgia, and later moved his practice to Greensboro, Georgia, remaining here from 1919 to 1923. 

   A veteran of the First World War, Sims would serve with the 82nd American Expeditionary Forces. He married in the early 1920s to Ruth Jackson (1897-1989), with whom he would have three children: Neil B. (1925-2014), Barbara and Thalia. Neil B. Sims would go on to prominence in his own right, being a Major in the U.S. Army Reserve, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and a past President of the Alabama Psychological Association.

Vaughnam Adolphus Sims, from the 1917 Pandora yearbook.

   In 1923 Vaughnam Sims moved to Lake Wales, Florida, where he would reside for the remainder of his life. In the year of his removal, he took office as Lake Wales City Attorney, an office he would continue to hold well into the 1930s. From 1926 to 1929 Sims served as the Mayor of Lake Wales and in 1933 is recorded as secretary of a Lake Wales School District Board of Trustees.

   A member of the Masons and the Knights of Pythias lodges, Sims was also active in the American Legion, serving as chaplain of the Lake Wales American Legion Post 71 in the early 1940s. Vaughnam A. Sims died in Lake Wales on July 19, 1950, at age 59. He was survived by his wife and three children and was later interred at the Lake Wales Cemetery.