In Memoriam: Chris Dembitz
Former stand-up stood in as Twitter’s ‘Phony Bennett’
The Twitter profile that would capture the hearts, minds and anxieties of UVA basketball fans started as an outlet for Chris Dembitz (Col ’95 CM) in 2012. His newborn daughter had been diagnosed with cancer, and watching UVA basketball was an escape. As her condition improved, Dembitz, who had worked as a comedian, anonymously launched @IfTonyTweeted on Twitter.
Dan Addison“Trying to laugh again and make people laugh again was something I very much needed,” Dembitz told UVA Today in 2018 when he officially revealed his identity.
The account purported to be a stand-in for Tony Bennett, UVA’s head basketball coach, who doesn’t tweet. Instead, “Phony Bennett,” as Dembitz named the account, described himself as “the dude pretending to be a dude kind of pretending to be another dude.” He started firing off zingers such as this nod to UVA’s famously slow pace of play: “Just finished my recruiting pitch to another potential transfer. Hoping he won’t notice the game tape I showed him was at 2x speed.”
Over the next 11 years, Dembitz drew tens of thousands to his page. And in tweets and retweets, his fans grieved when Dembitz’s wife, Racheal, announced in May to his nearly 25,000 followers that the 49-year-old had died from cancer.
“He fought a courageous battle with cancer in the way we knew he would—with strength, humility and, of course, humor,” the real Bennett said in a statement.
Dembitz grew up in Virginia Beach and, at UVA, nurtured his love for sports as a photo editor at the Cavalier Daily, often shooting games on the road. He was a calm presence in a newsroom filled with anxious people, remembered friend and former sports editor David Kazzie (Col ’95 CM). While he might have played “Phony” on Twitter, “there was nothing phony about him as a person,” Kazzie said.
After graduation and several years traveling the country as a stand-up comic, Dembitz, who lived in Chesapeake, Virginia, eventually settled into a successful career in property management for Clark-Whitehill Enterprises, where he met Racheal. The couple, who married in February, bonded over a shared dry humor and mutual love of the rock band Tool.
Racheal was there for most every Phony Bennett tweet in recent years, sometimes vetoing material if it got too dark. “I’m not a basketball fan per se, but I found myself rooting for the ’Hoos because he made it interesting,” she said.
While @IfTonyTweeted was a fun outlet, Dembitz also used it to boost awareness for causes he cared about, including childhood cancer in honor of his daughter, Audrey, who is now healthy. He also documented his own 18-month journey with metastatic adenocarcinoma.
And in recent years he began sharing his take on UVA basketball on another outlet: Locker Room Access, a website launched by UVA players Ty Jerome (Col class of ’20) and Justin Anderson (Col class of ’16). In 2020, he collaborated with them on a fundraiser for UVA Children’s Hospital’s oncology unit with the sale of “I am Phony Bennett” T-shirts, raising nearly $9,000.
“[W]ith this project, I get to combine two passions: fake coaching, and children’s cancer support,” Dembitz wrote on Locker Room Access’s website.
Dembitz’s humor resonated with UVA fans because it was fun to imagine Bennett, known for his humility and grace under pressure, saying what Dembitz tweeted, said Tien-Wei “TW” Huang (Col class of ’99), Locker Room Access CEO. But he also had a way of explaining the real-time mood of UVA fans.
“Basketball and sports aren’t the most important thing, but it’s really important to us, in our little bubble,” Huang said. “He was able to encapsulate that and make light of that. … He put it into perspective with humor, knowing what it meant to all of us.”
Dembitz is survived by his wife, Racheal; two daughters, Ella and Audrey; his mother; and his sister.
—Sarah Lindenfeld Hall