Chris Lee Santella

CHRIS SANTELLA

April 3, 1963 - May 23, 2024



Chris Santella, the creative force behind the best-selling travel book series Fifty Places...Before You Die, died on May 23, 2024, in Portland, Oregon. In September 2023, Chris had been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive, treatment-resistant metastatic cancer of the sinuses. Though his vision was significantly impaired, his pain was well-controlled, and throughout his illness Chris remained the thoughtful, hopeful, and good-natured friend, father, and husband he'd always been, facing his final days with steadfast courage.

Chris was a writer, musician, marketing guru, and a fountainhead of ingenuity. He was a world traveler, approaching new places and experiences with enthusiasm and boundless curiosity. In his work as in his life, Chris combined kindness and generosity with diligence and focus to produce a prodigious body of creative work. In addition to the nineteen books in the Fifty Places series, Santella coauthored a natural science book called Cat Wars with his childhood friend, the ornithologist Pete Marra.

Chris wrote hundreds of articles on fly fishing, golf, and other recreational pursuits, many appearing in the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as in regional publications, travel and airline magazines, and specialty journals dedicated to fishing, his beloved pastime, and the strongest rival to music, golf, family, and friendships for his unalloyed affection. In 2017, Santella collected thirty of these occasional essays in an anthology, The Tug is the Drug.

During two cycles of radiation therapy, Chris completed his first work of fiction - a flyfishing guide's antics in Alaska entitled Belgian Flats. He also recorded an original rock opera about the segregationist governor George Wallace, along with a children's picture book called Biking with Grandma.

Christopher Lee Santella was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on April 3, 1963. Adopted by Tina and Andy Santella, Chris grew up as an only child in Norwalk, Connecticut, and graduated from Norwalk High School, where he met his first circle of lifelong friends. A skilled hockey player as well as the State First Chair clarinetist, Chris enjoyed spending time with his maternal grandparents in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where he discovered fishing.

The first book in the Fifty Places series, Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die, debuted in 2004. In the fall of 2005, inspired by another favorite hobby, Santella published Fifty Places to Play Golf..., and the series was off and running for another seventeen titles, covering camping, hiking, surfing, traveling solo, traveling with your dog, and more. A craft beer aficionado, Chris found a way to blend his informed commentary on breweries with recommendations for field trips in Fifty Places to Drink Beer.

Chris organized, composed for, and played guitar with the folk-rock band Catch and Release. Performing some original songs, not always related to fly fishing, as fans of the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, and the Rolling Stones, the band honored its musical idols with faithful covers. In addition to absorbing the discographies of Bob Dylan, John Hiatt, and Richard Thompson, Chris memorized, sang and strummed from his cornucopia of tunes on many a porch, couch, and campsite, playing with his traveling guitar in sundry time zones, altitudes, countries, and continents.

Chris majored in English at Middlebury College, graduating in 1985. After a brief tenure as a copywriter for a small ad agency, Chris (semi-reluctantly) enrolled in Yale University's School of Management (SOM). SOM allowed Chris to add color to his study of business by taking classes at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Chris realized he was not suited for a career in New York as an investment banker, but graduated with honors and , as in college and high school, Chris cultivated dear friends at Yale.

In 1990, Chris moved to San Francisco, which offered him access to the wild and challenging fly-fishing waters of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. The Bay Area also presented music festivals and concerts, among them shows by his beloved Grateful Dead. On Labor Day 1991, Chris met Dee (Deidre Orquist) at the Oakland Blues Festival. Chris proposed before Christmas. Despite falling asleep at a Grateful Dead show during the performance of Space, Dee redeemed herself by encouraging a bashful Chris to rise from the grass for a slow dance to Attics. They were married on June 13, 1992, in the Cathedral Grove of Muir Woods National Park in Marin, CA. As they exchanged vows--e e cummings: i carry your heart, i carry it in my heart-- a pair of graceful fawns strolled by to bless their union.

Chris had a world-wide circle of friends, but when the breweries, mountains, links-style courses, and rivers of Oregon beckoned, Portland became the Santellas' home base in 1999. Daughters, Cassidy (24), and Annabel (20) were born in Portland. Autumn steelhead and Spring trout seasons tugged hard, but wherever he was, Chris remained an active and devoted son, thoughtful friend, Dada and husband, adored by his family.

Chris continued to genuinely enjoy Catch and Release rehearsals and music jams; golf with dear friends in Portland, Bandon Dunes, San Diego and Banff; salt and freshwater fly-fishing with family and friends on Turneffe Atoll in Belize, on Florida's Manasota Key, and on the Metolius and the Deschutes Rivers. Just as he had lived with intensity and imagination, Chris faced these eight months with courage and grace.

"The fly-fishing world is a little bit less 'adventurous,' and a quite a bit less 'literary' now," wrote Kirk Deeter of Trout Unlimited, "because we lost one of the purest, most inspiring writing voices the sport has ever known."

Chris was preceded in death by his parents and is survived by his wife, Dee, Santella, along with Dee's extended family, their daughters Cassidy and Annabel, and their faithful dog, Lola, and a community of beloved friends.

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Details about Chris's last few months are on his post on the CaringBridge website.

Memorials may be made to The Flyfishing Collaborative; The Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Research Foundation; American Cancer Society; Oregon Humane Society, or charity of your choice.