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GREENSBORO — Diane Stephenson keeps her husband John beneath a butterfly in her back yard.

At least his ashes.

She goes out there often with her dogs Al and Abby. And when she does, she thinks of her husband, the record store owner, the Robert Earl Keen fan, the green-eyed, pony-tailed rebel in a T-shirt.

It’s been a decade since she lost him, taken a few days before Thanksgiving 1999 by a rare cancer lodged in his brain. John was 52.

He died at home, with Diane beside him, her left hand on his chest, her right hand on his cheek, as she told him in a whisper, “Go on, I’ll be OK.’’

She has.

Diane, 53, ditched her career as a cardiac nurse eight years ago because she couldn’t stand being surrounded by death.

She now works part time as a massage therapist. “No one dies at my table,” she says. “They just drool and snore.’’

Diane keeps on her refrigerator a magazine ad of laughing kids, with a tagline she sees every day: “Giggle. No, laugh. No, howl as if you’ve never grown up.’’

So, she howls, keeps up Christmas tree lights year-round and listens all the time to Robert Earl Keen sing in his croaky Texas drawl.

And this time of year, she raises lots of money for something she calls Hoepuccky.

For eight consecutive years, she has brought together friends and raised $75,000 for the Brain Tumor Center at Duke, the place that kept John alive and made his death a little more bearable.

She’ll do that again this afternoon at Green’s Supper Club, where she and John held their wedding rehearsal dinner in 1982.

At least 500 people are expected to come to remember their rebel in a T-shirt, the man who turned them onto more music than they ever knew existed.

In 1976, John turned in his salesman tie for a T-shirt and opened School Kids Records in a tiny space near UNCG with no AC and no front door.

He moved his store twice, renamed it Skids CDs and kept at it — even as digitized music and music-sharing software slowly ate away his profits.

John believed in his store’s slogan: “Let the music keep your spirits high.’’

That attitude endeared him to many in Greensboro.

So, like a disconnected family, bonded by their love for all things tuneful, John’s friends and fans converge every spring to tell stories about School Kids.

But mostly, they come to talk about John. And see his Diane.

John and Diane met in 1980, of all places, at School Kids. Diane wanted to buy a Christopher Cross album. John tried to talk her out of it. He couldn’t. So, he ordered it for her and gave her his business card — with his phone number on the back.

“Call me if you need anything,’’ he told her.

She did. She was 23, a recent UNCG grad who was fascinated by this music man from Murfreesboro.

They never parted.

It was February 1999 when John stumbled into the living room, like he had belted down one too many beers, and told Diane he had a killer headache that he couldn’t shake.

Diane’s nurse senses kicked in. She took John to the hospital and heard the worries confirmed by a doctor: “I’m sorry to tell you, John has a brain tumor and it’s fairly large.’’

Doctors operated on John’s brain to relieve the pressure. It helped. Still, John began to slip. His knees shook, his words became indecipherable, his actions became downright odd.

Then, his mobility went. By October, he was sitting in a wheelchair listening to Robert Earl Keen live for the umpteenth time during soundcheck at Ziggy’s — just him and Diane, in an empty club, with Keen yelling from a few feet away, “What do you want to hear next, John?’’

By November, John was gone.

Today, Diane drives every month to Virginia to help her 37-year-old niece, Miche, a teacher and mother of two. Miche has cancer — the same rare cancer John had.

Diane feeds and bathes her. She also counsels Miche’s husband, Larry, especially when he wishes she had some other cancer that didn’t rob her of who she was.

“Oh,’’ Diane says, “I understand.’’

So, yeah, Diane is OK. She has her moments. But she’s got that butterfly in the backyard and that thing she calls Hoepuccky.

It’s one of the last words John wrote, in a note to his good friend Mark Rubin. It was for Rubin’s birthday: You All Alwaay Hoepuccky.

It’s now the name of the nonprofit Diane created to raise money for the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke. And right now, it’s $75,000 — and counting.

“I defy anyone to tell me one person can’t make a difference,’’ Diane says. “One person can. It might be a small ripple. But it’s a mighty big pond.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com