Nearly five years after being diagnosed with cancer and two years after inspiring a community-wide fundraising effort that raised more than $22,000 in her honor, Hollister resident Diana Magana succumbed to the disease this week at age 17.
San Benito High School Activities Director Juan Robledo recalled that during the height of the “Dancing for Diana” campaign to help offset costs for Diana’s family a couple of years ago, he told her mother that the high school should be thanking her and her daughter.
“I told her that her willingness to be at the center of all our efforts caused a mass caring and compassionate feeling across our big campus,” Robledo said. “Students seemed friendlier and very proud. So I told her that although we were raising all this money for Diana, our students were taking away a priceless experience that would be theirs for a lifetime.”
That year, the Dancing for Diana campaign “became a call for giving,” Robledo said, referencing YouTube videos that encouraged locals to donate by dancing for the then-freshman student.
The call became a walk-a-thon and a concert for Diana. And it expanded from there.
Last year, Mari Rossi of B&R Farms, where Diana’s grandparents, parents and uncles work, coordinated donations including a weeklong trip to Southern California theme parks, a gift certificate for new clothes, and a day of beauty treatments at local spas and salons.
SBHS students coordinated a card-writing campaign for Diana when it became clear that her disease was terminal and Robledo said, “we had the community calling us to see what they could do to help.”
On Wednesday morning, a student approached Robledo with a message from Diana’s mom:
“She said to tell me thank you for all we did for Diana,” he said. “This hit hard and it was hard to hold back my tears.”
During zero period that day, as news of Diana’s passing began to spread on campus, a student whose father is good friends with Diana’s cousin told Robledo “that Diana in her final minutes talked about the students who had danced for her.”
And then she went to dance with the angels.
Hina Moheyuddin, a 2011 SBHS graduate who helped with the Dancing for Diana effort, said, “Diana helped our community and council of 2009-2010 more than we helped her. She brought together strangers across town; she gave us a reason to work harder; and she left a legacy not only in the record books, but in our hearts.”
Moheyuddin recounted how she once came across a Hebrew proverb that read, “Say not in grief ‘he is no more,’ but live in thankfulness that he was.”
Like many who knew Diana and worked their best to help raise awareness about her plight and money for her treatment, Moheyuddin tried this week to remember how Diana’s struggles gave other students perspective and purpose at an age when narcissism is a dominant characteristic.
Diana was initially reluctant about benefiting from proceeds of the 2010 SBHS Benefit Ball. But after discussing it with her parents, she accepted the school’s – and ultimately, the community’s – help.
She may not have realized it at the time, but she also helped her community by showing a strength of spirit while facing circumstances no one – particularly a high school student whose memories should be of dances and rallies and friends, not hospital stays – should face.
Visitation will be Feb. 10, at the Grunnagle-Ament-Nelson funeral home chapel from 2 to 8 p.m. Private inurnment will be held.
Adam Breen teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @AdamPBreen.
