Ray Stipanovich

Ray Stipanovich left this life on December 5, 2022, to join his beloved wife, Betty, and his only daughter, Kandi Rae, in the next. He was the sixth of the nine children of Nicholas and Mildred Stipanovich, hard-working Serbian immigrants who never fully mastered the English language but who fervently believed in the American Dream, which their son, who they called "Rade", exemplified.
Born when Warren G. Harding was President, Ray was an uncomplicated man of striking contrasts. He was christened and confirmed in the Eastern Orthodox Church, but he became a Baptist deacon and a thirty-second degree Mason. He attended Serbian language school on Saturday mornings as a boy in Kansas City, but he spoke with the drawl of the Southerner he became. He had only a GED, but he prized education for his children above everything but honesty and honor.
With the patriotism that often distinguishes appreciative first-generation Americans, Ray joined the Marine Corps within weeks of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which put him on the road that led him to Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and beyond in the Pacific. Following the war, he worked around the country as a plumber and pipefitter until at age thirty-four he came to rest in Gainesville, working for W.W. Gay Mechanical Contractors and living in nearby Williston, where he met two young boys one evening at a basketball game. The boys liked him well enough to introduce him to their single mother, who liked him well enough to marry him and remain his wife until her death fifty-five years later.
Those two boys, Mac and Coleman, survive their father, as do grandchildren and great grandchildren too numerous to name, in whom he will live on, not only in their memories but in who they are, because he was a man who shaped lives by his example, a man who will be sorely missed by all whose privilege it was to know him.
A graveside service will be held for Rade at 10:00 AM on Friday, December 9, 2022 at Orange Hill Cemetery in Williston, Florida where he will be laid to rest next to his wife and daughter.
Breanna Green of Bevis Funeral Home is assisting the family with their arrangements. (850-385-2193 or www.bevisfh.com)