Dawn Staley Doesn’t Care What You Think

Anthony’s death left a larger crater than Dawn expected. One of the reasons she took the Carolina job in 2008 was to be closer to Estelle, who had developed Alzheimer’s; Clarence had died two years earlier. Estelle died five months after Dawn won the national championship in 2017. Around the same time, Dawn was diagnosed with pericarditis—inflammation of tissue around the heart—which nearly crippled her. Now Tracey has leukemia and Anthony is gone.

One of Dawn’s favorite phrases is “control what you can control,” but for a long time, it felt like she was living in the eye of a tornado. “We fought our way out of it,” she says. “You know it’s life, it’s… deal with it,” she offers. The adage kept rewinding in her head: “control what you can control…control what you can control.” But Anthony’s death tested this motto.

Anthony got sick around the end of March. He went to the hospital and Dawn says doctors told him he could go back to work. But he felt horrible, his body aching and the coughing incessant, so, he took a week off. And then he had a major stroke. One of Dawn’s grand-nieces found him in his house. “She lives with him so she was headed out to work, and she saw him lying on the floor,” Dawn tells me. “He didn’t have any clothes on, and he couldn’t talk.” They got him in an ambulance and sprinted to the local hospital, but “it was just downhill from there,” she says.

Anthony was put on ventilators and at one point a defibrillator, but he had a heart attack in the hospital. “He didn’t really have good days, you know?” Dawn said. “Even if he recovered, he would have been in a state that he wouldn’t want to be in, so I was actually dreading that, just having to be one of four siblings that had to decide what was best for him. We prayed that he would recover, we prayed, just recover, just…” Her eyes begin to water. “My oldest brother said, ‘We’re letting him pass away.’” Dawn tried to prepare herself for the inevitable, whispering to herself, “he’s not going to be with us,” but “you’re in denial,” she says.

The family didn’t want Anthony to ache any longer. They thought he would go quickly. But he stayed for an extra day, so Dawn slept at the hospital with him. Around 10am the next morning, she went on a quick walk to the hotel for a shower. Picked up some street art. Got herself together. “Then my brother calls,” she says. “He’s like, ‘It’s not good.’” Anthony was gone. “Part of me really didn’t want to see him transition.” she continues. The same thing happened when Estelle went. Dawn didn’t see that either. She can’t handle it. Maybe, she thinks, that’s why Anthony left when he did. “You know… I sang to him, put the gospel on, we talked to him, we told him we loved him. We did all of that, so I was… You know,” she sniffles. “I’m in a good place knowing that it was peaceful.”