Ruby Arora is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Brophy College Prep for AZPreps365.com.

What started as a day to cherish became a life-defining moment for Evana Santee and foreshadowed the type of person she would become.

It was two cold weeks before Christmas, and Santee, who was eight at the time and was in the midst of an even colder year, was looking forward to spending the day with her parents at home.

It was that time of the year: a time to be grateful for your loved ones - and Santee very much was.

Santee's father had been diagnosed with brain cancer 12 months earlier with an 11-month prognosis, causing her to spend much of the year at the hospital for any father-daughter time while he endured chemo.

“I built you to be stronger than your mother,” her father confidently told her. “Your mom is going to struggle with this, and I need you to grow up and help her.” 

Santee’s father knew what was coming. 

Celester “Tee” Santee had his daughter open the Christmas gifts that day, and one of the gifts Santee opened was her first basketball, unknowingly transitioning the girl's passion from dance to basketball. 

Santee's father’s gift became a factor that led her to become the Central High School athletic director that she is today.

Tee fell into a coma and passed away five days before Christmas, leaving behind a heartbroken wife and a daughter who decades later would mend the hearts of the broken as an athletic director at Central High School. 

Santee won’t give up on you

When families of Central High School students cannot make it to their games, Santee will go to cheer them on because she feels it is essential to show them support.

“Santee [everyone calls her by her surname] is a second mom,” says Northern Arizona University defensive end Eloi Kwete. “She’s the reason you’d want to send your kid to (Central) High School.”

Kwete recalls watching the clock drain as he stood on the five-yard line in his first, and unknowingly last, game at Central High School in 2019.

The senior played on both ends of the ball, defensive tackle and running back, and lethargy had kicked in until he looked up and saw Santee. She stood on the sidelines of the end zone, cheering as loud as she could for him. 

Vim and vigor replaced the lethargy Kwete had felt as he caught the ball on offense and torpedoed through the defensive line not towards the end zone but towards Santee for a touchdown. 

Later in the game, Kwete was tackled in a way that broke his neck. He was unaware of his injury until the following Monday when the athletic trainer sent him to get X-rays.

Kwete sat out the rest of the season per the doctor’s instructions. Although he was expected to make a full recovery, Kwete wanted to quit football, but Santee wouldn’t let him.

She knew he was in his head a lot since the injury, so she’d encourage him until he finally agreed not to quit, and he hasn’t looked back since. 

“No one could do the job like Santee,” Kwete says. “She’s a big reason I’m playing Division I football.”

Now, anytime Kwete has a break at NAU, he’ll always make time to see Santee, like many other graduates who have kept in contact with her.

The “family method” at Central High School works because Santee built the foundation with the intent of making her role at Central High School so much bigger than that of an athletic director. 

Santee’s work is home

“She’s very internal,” says the Central High School Senior Office Assistant for Student Opportunities, Sandra Stringer. “Santee has always helped everyone more than herself.”

Santee buries herself in her work because she loves helping people. 

Santee adopted the “family method” in her work at Central, creating an ambiance and environment more similar to a home and a family rather than a department.

When you walk into the athletic office, there is a kitchen area to the left that is always stocked with snacks, meals and drinks that Santee and Stringer provide. Students are often hungry between classes, during free periods, or just didn’t like the school lunch, so Santee and Stringer thought it’d be good to always have food available.

“I’m half Black and half Italian,” Santee says. “So I’m like always cooking for ten people when I have a family of four. So I always had leftovers and started bringing them to school.” 

Some of Santee’s Italian dishes included ziti, which the students never had and wanted to try. Santee happily obliged, and eventually, the students found their way to the athletic office almost every day to see if Santee had cooked more ziti or any food at all.

Santee’s ethnicity not only brings excellent flavors to cooking but helps her relate to students at the school who may have endured the same adversity she did when she was growing up, like walking with an Italian mother who’s fair-skinned while her own skin complements both parents. 

Santee’s nurturing side of a mother and a father’s toughness make her family method ideal because, in tragedies, everyone could use a family. 

Santee’s life is work

Santee’s work life resembles her personal life all too well, and the resemblance is the exact reason she was made for the athletic director position.

Central High School has faced many tragedies, from losing four students in the last year alone and two faculty members in the previous two years, with deaths ranging from COVID-19 to being stabbed by an unprovoked homeless woman.

The more recent tragedy was the premature death of the 2020-21 Athlete of the Year Corvell Simmons in August from a paddling accident. Santee, now 37, couldn’t break down. She had to collect herself to give an impromptu speech at the candlelight gathering for his passing because it’s what the grieving school needed.

Another reason why Santee buries herself in her work, which may not be so evident, is because it’s easier to be busy than grieve.

The downfall of loving so deeply, she’ll feel their loss just the same. 

Santee still sheds tears when she speaks of her students’ premature deaths. Her eyes would fall, and she’d ask for a moment to be excused because she couldn’t finish her sentences.

“She’s a mother to thousands,” Stringer said. “She’ll do anything, at any point, to help any students here as a mom would.”

When all you’ve ever known is to mend the hearts of the broken, you often forget that you’re allowed to break down yourself and that you don’t always have to be so strong.

Santee’s forgotten for a while now.

Santee as a parent and child

When Santee was 29 years old, she had her second child, Duane Jr (DJ). DJ was three weeks old when he was admitted into the ICU because had turned blue from an adult cold in the middle of the night, which eventually caused his lungs to collapse.

“The doctors told me DJ had a thirty percent chance (of surviving),” Santee said.

Tape and a partial face mask covered half of DJ’s face to hold the tubes in place from his nostrils and connect to a machine to help him breathe. He was wrapped in blankets and surrounded by family members in hazmat clothing because his health was so vulnerable, yet Santee didn’t break down.

Maybe that’s why nobody noticed she was emotionally and mentally suffocating from the tragedies. 

She couldn’t show it because she had to do what she did best: mend everyone else, such as her mother.

Santee’s 62-year-old mother, Ann Santee, walked up the stairs of Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, the same hospital where Tee had died 21 years earlier, to see her grandson fighting for his life. 

Ann broke down in tears as she entered the room and saw DJ.

Santee led her mother out of the room to a moment that resembled what Tee had once told Santee. 

“You can’t break down right now,” Santee told her mother. “I need you to be strong.”

DJ survived, but Ann had a heart attack three weeks later and was hospitalized.

Shortly afterward, Ann texted Santee, “I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter, but I can’t be a burden on your life anymore.”

She passed away two days later from the very thing she predicted would kill her one day.

“She (Ann) always knew she’d die from her heartbreak since Dad passed,” Santee said. “The heart attack… heartbreak.” 

Left to right: Daughter Italia, Duane Eason, Evana Santee, Son Duane Jr. (courtesy of Evana Santee)

Ann left knowing Santee was successful in her professional and personal life. Ann saw Santee graduate with a master’s degree in administration and supervision in education. She met her two beautiful grandkids, Italia and DJ, and their loving father, Duane Eason, whom Santee loved dearly. But what Ann didn’t get to see was the pain Santee carried.

The pain is one of the reasons Santee never walked down the aisle to marry Duane.

Even though Santee’s been in love with Duane for almost 12 years and the common law does view them as married, Santee never had a wedding. Daughters dream of their fathers walking them down the aisle and a mother sitting in the front row with tears of joy. Santee seemingly did not want to live that dream without them. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” Santee said. “It won’t be the same without my mom or dad being there.”

Santee is a woman that has dedicated her life to mending others, always being what everyone else needs, and always being strong, but even the strong need mending sometimes. So hug her the next time you see her because she is making it look easy when it’s not.