"Raymond and I worked out every chance we got," Vaughn said. "On Mondays [the players' day off], he'd pick me up in that beat-up old car at my parents' place on Franklin Street, and we'd go to Druid Hill or Clifton Park to practice his pass patterns.
"When we got there, he would park, then open the hood and tape his key to the carburetor, so no one would steal the car. Then we'd go to work.
"He had me throw balls high and low, at his feet, to make him dive left and right. If he had dropped a pass on Sunday, we ran that play again and again until he figured out why. He left nothing to bear."
Each workout seemed to last forever - Vaughn and Berry playing catch in a public park at a time when such scenes might have raised a few eyebrows.
"That [setting] would have been extremely unusual in Baltimore in the mid-'50s," said C. Fraser Smith, author of Here Lies Jim Crow: Civil Rights in Maryland.
"But despite the fact that there were social controls against doing such things, people did mix with other races," Smith said. "Some had their own moral compasses and abided by them. They had a sense of what was the decent way to behave in this world."
After practice, Berry drove his teammate home. On occasion, he stayed for dinner as Vaughn's mother filled his plate with chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and biscuits despite the protestations of the weight-conscious Berry.
"We really did have a good time," Vaughn said.
If they heard racial slurs on the street, neither man remembers them.
"I didn't pay attention to what other people were thinking," Berry said. "Besides, I wasn't raised to think that way."
After football season, the two went their own ways. Berry played 12 more years with the Colts and made the Pro Bowl six times. He retired with 631 receptions, then an NFL record. Berry later became coach of the New England Patriots, taking them to the Super Bowl in January 1986.
His stand on civil rights never wavered. In 1964, he was serving in the Maryland National Guard when race riots broke out in Cambridge. Guard officials chose Berry to lead a human relations committee to help restore peace. The All-Pro receiver spent six weeks in the Eastern Shore town. Ultimately, calm prevailed.
And Vaughn? After a two-year Army hitch, he tried a comeback with the Colts in 1958 but got hurt early in training camp.
"Jim Parker [the Hall of Fame tackle] stepped on my right knee and popped the cartilage," Vaughn said. "I was finished."
