{"id":9829,"date":"2012-06-19T16:39:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T21:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=9829"},"modified":"2012-06-19T16:39:40","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T21:39:40","slug":"danny-ray-stephenson-58","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/06\/danny-ray-stephenson-58\/","title":{"rendered":"Danny Ray Stephenson, 58"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Family and friends of Danny Ray Stephenson, a Lehigh Acres, Florida resident since 1970, suffered a huge loss when he passed away on Friday, June 15, 2012 at Gulf Coast Hospital in Fort Myers, Florida.\u00a0\u00a0Danny was born in Batesville, Indiana and was 58.\u00a0\u00a0He was known throughout Southwest Florida for his unique guitar playing ability.\u00a0\u00a0He was the other half of the Danny and MeloDee duo that played at the Club Coach in Lehigh Acres for over 26 years.\u00a0\u00a0His well-rounded style included folk, rock, zydeco, gospel, country, and bluegrass.\u00a0He was most recently the lead guitar and bass vocal for Bill Gouley\u2019s Golden Road Quartet, and he was lead guitar for the Moccasin River Band.\u00a0\u00a0He had settled into his niche as a single act and was last performing on Sanibel-Captiva Island.\u00a0\u00a0As a second generation piano technician, he supplemented his music by tuning pianos.<\/p>\n

Danny was also a youth advocate.\u00a0\u00a0Throughout his early Lehigh life he was active in coaching youth soccer.\u00a0He also served for many years as athletic director on the Lehigh Youth Soccer Association board of directors.\u00a0He coached both recreational and competitive soccer teams, and was certified to referee both league and high school soccer.\u00a0\u00a0During the past 3 years Danny was DJ for the monthly Veteran\u2019s Park teen dances, and he was DJ for the Lehigh Middle School dances<\/p>\n

Danny served as the treasurer and entertainment director on the Lehigh Spring Festival board of directors.\u00a0Most of Lehigh will remember him as the \u201cvoice\u201d of the annual Lehigh Spring Festival.\u00a0\u00a0He emceed every day of the 9-day festival from the main stage as well as being co-emcee of the festival parade.<\/p>\n

Danny was preceded in death by his mother, Dorothy Townsend.\u00a0\u00a0He is survived by wife, Judy Carter Stephenson; father, John Stephenson; brother, Jeffrey Stephenson; son, Chris Stephenson; daughter, Mistee Licari; 4 grandsons, and a niece.<\/p>\n

There will be no funeral, however a memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 30, 2012 at Veteran\u2019s Park on the main stage in Lehigh Acres.\u00a0\u00a0Immediately following the memorial service there will be a celebration of Danny\u2019s life, a benefit that will include music, food, an auction, and children\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n

In lieu of flowers, the family is working on establishing a special account at a local bank where donations can be made to cover medical expenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family and friends of Danny Ray Stephenson, a Lehigh Acres, Florida resident since 1970, suffered a huge loss when he passed away on Friday, June 15, 2012 at Gulf Coast… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}