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BENEFIT HONORS MEMORY OF RECORD STORE OWNER

Date: February 27, 2003 Edition(s): ALL
Page: D1 Section: LIFE
Column: JAMIE KRITZER

When John Stephenson died from a brain tumor in 1999, he left behind one of Greensboro's best little record stores, a ton of friends in the local music scene and his soul mate, Diane.

Now, Diane Stephenson is honoring her late husband - with a little help from her friends.
On Sunday - four years to the day since his tumor was discovered - Slider, a local band that plays mainly rock 'n roll covers, will perform at the Blind Tiger.

Stephenson and the members of Slider will use the performance to raise funds so that doctors can stop brain tumors like the one that robbed them of their 52-year-old friend. The show is free but Stephenson will accept donations.

``The cause is obviously something that is near and dear to me,'' she says. ``If I could have walked across a bed of coals to give him an extra week or month of quality time, I'd have done it. I would have done anything.''

Stephenson, a woman with rosy cheeks and long blond hair, stares out the window of her home on Cedar Street. She looks as if she has disappeared to some faraway place, then she blinks.

``But it didn't happen.''

Diane and John met in 1980. He was running his music store of four years, School Kids Records and Tapes, at the corner of Aycock and Spring Garden streets. She was a recent grad of UNCG, looking for a little musical inspiration.

She couldn't help but notice the tall, red-haired guy with the pony tail, especially when he tried to talk her out of buying that Christopher Cross album.

``He thought I should buy something like John Prine or Little Feat,'' she says. ``He called Christopher Cross ' '80s yuck' .''

``So, I went ahead and got my Christopher Cross album, and I also got a date.''

It wasn't long before she realized she had met her soul mate or, as she puts it, her rudder in the sea of life. The couple married two years later.

They spent 17 years together. She worked as a registered nurse. He continued to run School Kids, the store where he offered one of the Triad's best selections of black gospel music and a headquarters for home-brewed beer supplies.

What his store lacked in size, Stephenson made up for by learning his customer's names and what music they liked to hear.

``If I didn't like something, he could point out why,'' says Lynn Gladden, a regular customer. ``He could always give me something to think about.''

When not at the store, Stephenson and his wife would head out to hear a live band, take a trip to the West Coast or escape to their cabin 25 miles away in Rockingham County.

But then, in February 1999, John Stephenson got a headache he couldn't kick.

The next day, doctors discovered a tumor the size of a Ping-Pong ball in Stephenson's brain, and the prognosis was grim. He died nine months later.

Since then, Stephenson has quit her job as a nurse because tending to patients reminded her too much of John's last days when the tumor wouldn't let him even speak to his wife.

School Kids has closed. Like a lot of independent record store owners, Stephenson blamed its demise on the rise in music-sharing software and Web sites that allow music fans to download music for free.

Stephenson has undergone months of therapy to work through that nagging question in her subconscious: Was there anything she could have done that would have kept him alive?

Now, she knows there is.

``I finally I came to the realization that I did the best I could,'' she says. ``For me, one way to honor him is to do this benefit so that somebody else will have a better chance than he did.''
Contact Jamie Kritzer at 373-7319 or jkritzer@news-record.com

Memo: WANT TO HELP?
What: Musical benefit for the Brain Tumor Center at Duke University

When: 4 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: The Blind Tiger, 2115 Walker Ave., Greensboro

Admission: Free. Donations accepted.
Information: 272-4610.

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