Guy Nell Leenhouts, 81 years old, passed away Thursday, December 21, 2023 at Cornerstone Hospice in Gotha, Florida.
Guy was born August 2, 1942 in Ocala, Florida and the only child of the late Walter F. and Nell E. Warnock of Inverness Florida. The Warnock lineage, of Scottish and Irish decent, were one of the founding families of Inverness, and they established the first doctor, preacher, and newspaper of Citrus County.
“Guy Nell” graduated from Citrus High School in 1960 where she was a cheerleader and she maintained close friendships with many of her classmates and school friends. For 16 years, she and a group of her closest childhood girlfriends spent a week vacationing together every summer, calling themselves the “Ya Ya Sisters.”
Guy was a ballerina and after graduating high school, attended Orlando Junior College, while studying ballet at Ebsen Studios and performing with the Central Florida Civic Ballet Company. She also performed in the famous Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia on Peachtree Street, studying under Russian performer Joseph Levinoff.
Guy and her first husband, who was in the military, were stationed for 4 years in Hokkaido, Japan, only 200 miles from Soviet Siberia. Guy loved the Japanese people, and that love was reciprocated. This Florida native, with blond hair and blue eyes, was recruited to be the weather girl on Far East Network for all of Japan, which receives an average snowfall of 30 feet a year! After the marriage ended, she returned to the states and that is where she met and married the true love of her life, Donald Robert Leenhouts who passed away of cancer after 28 years of marriage. They are reunited now.
Guy’s hobbies included all kinds of crafts, knitting, ribbon embroidery, and she loved doing counted cross-stitch with tiny beads and metallic threads. She was a Guardian Ad-litem, advocating for children in court proceedings and a member of the Red Hat Society. She was known to countless of her daughters’ friends and classmates as “Mama Guy” and was an active homeroom mother. Guy was a caring person, always ready to help anyone in need while being a devoted wife, mother and friend.
Guy was preceded in death by her aforementioned parents and husband as well as her infant daughter, Leeza Lynn. She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Aimee Lynn & Joel Thomas Carver and the light of her life, her grandson, Caleb Thomas Carver.
A funeral service will be held on Saturday January 13, 2024 at Baldwin Fairchild Funeral Home, Conway Chapel, Orlando, FL. A reception will begin at 11 a.m., followed by the service at noon. She will be laid to rest at Chapel Hill Cemetery, Harrell Road at 1:30 p.m.