http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/31/Ta..._from_hu.shtml


By KELLEY BENHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published March 31, 2005

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Before the prayer warriors massed outside her window, before gavels
pounded in six courts, before the Vatican issued a statement, before
the president signed a midnight law and the Supreme Court turned its
head, Terri Schiavo was just an ordinary girl, with two overweight
cats, an unglamorous job and a typical American life.

The life she led, the one she chose, never warranted media coverage.
When she collapsed on Feb. 25, 1990, and stopped breathing, she had a
few close friends, a family who loved her fiercely, and a name no
stranger would recognize. She was 26.

When she died today (March 31, 2005), she was an international icon, a
vessel into which people poured their need for miracles, their
convictions about personal liberty, their ideas of democracy and
justice and heroes and villains, and their terror of letting go.

Thousands of people spoke on her behalf, even if they mispronounced
her name. But only a few had ever heard her voice or stood alone with
her in a quiet room. She knew nothing of her fame. She would not have
recognized her own face on CNN. She was 26, still. Except she was 41.

* * *

She was born Theresa Marie Schindler on Dec. 3, 1963, the first child
of Bob and Mary Schindler. She grew up in a four-bedroom colonial on
Red Wing Lane in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her family said grace
before dinner and had roast beef on Sundays. She was Catholic.

Bob Schindler was a salesman and owned a material handling business.
Mary Schindler stayed home. Terri hardly ever got in trouble, and she
kept her room neat. Her gerbils were always getting loose and winding
up in the air conditioning unit in the basement.

She had a little brother, Bobby, and a little sister, Suzanne. Bobby
once locked her in a suitcase. Another time, he threw a brick at her
head.

Terri was chubby, with dark curly hair and thick glasses with heavy
frames. She hated her glasses. When her mother took her shopping for
school clothes, she cried.

She attended Our Lady of Good Counsel grade school, where she pined
for a boy named Vincent Mandez. She would buy his favorite foods so
she could trade with him at lunch. "Think of all the money we spent on
you-know-who," she later wrote in her friend Sue Pickwell's yearbook.
She never told him she liked him.

At Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, Pa., her only activity
was library aide. She dusted and rearranged the books. She and Sue
decided to be library aides so there would not be blanks next to their
names in the yearbook.

Sue sneaked cigarettes from her dad's shirt pocket and she and Terri
smoked them in the woods. They took only the required classes, no
extra math. Junior year they had a hard history class and conspired to
slack off and annoy the teacher. Summer school was two easy weeks.

Terri parted her hair in the middle and feathered it on the sides. She
didn't date. She didn't go to dances. She didn't go to the prom.

When she graduated in 1981, she weighed 200 pounds.

She tried not to draw attention to herself. She didn't start
conversations. She had a huge laugh that people remembered. She
defended people other people made fun of. She cried over injured
animals, real and fictional. When her Labrador retriever, Bucky,
collapsed of old age in the driveway, she performed mouth-to-nose
resuscitation. He died anyway.

She was always cold and loved the sunshine. She vacationed on the
Jersey shore, chasing her friends on the sand, trying to peel their
sunburned skin.

She aspired to be skinny and to fall in love. She read Danielle Steele
novels. She saw An Officer and a Gentleman four times in one day. She
loved Wham!, especially George Michael; she preferred blonds. She
loved Starsky and Hutch , especially **** Michael Glaser; he was an
exception to the blond thing. She and her friend Diane Meyer would
drive past construction crews in Terri's Trans Am, just looking. They
would look at wedding dresses together, just daydreaming.

She wanted a wedding with a horse and carriage. She lost 50 pounds.

Michael Schiavo was in her psychology class her second semester at
Bucks County Community College. Michael told his brother Brian that he
had heard laughter and had to turn in his seat to see who was laughing
like that. As far as anyone knows, he was the first guy who ever
noticed her.

Michael was a year older than Terri, a foot taller and blond. When he
picked her up for their first date, Bobby Schindler stood on the front
lawn and cheered.

Michael was her first kiss. He told her that she was beautiful. Terri
fell hard and fast. Michael told his brother Scott, "She's the one,
I'm going to get married."

"Lucky you," Scott said. "You found a wonderful girl."

In an interview March 15, Michael remembered what he saw in her. "She
was shy until she got to know you," he said. "She was a great person,
a hometown girl, you know what I'm saying? She had that little flair
about her that you just loved."

Michael proposed after five months. Terri wrote a letter to John
Denver, asking him to sing at the wedding. She never heard back.

Her father thought she was too young to get married. The night before
the wedding, he sat on her bedroom floor and watched her sleep. He was
crying.

Terri and Michael were married Nov. 10, 1984, at Our Lady of Good
Counsel Church, in front of about 250 guests. It was the wedding she
had always wanted, except that she refused to wait for warmer weather
so she could have the horse and carriage. She wore a size 12 dress and
carried white flowers.

They vacationed in St. Petersburg and moved there in 1986. Her parents
and brother followed later. They first lived in the Schindlers'
vacation condo, then in an apartment on Fourth Street N. They had two
cats, Tolly and Shane. Terri fed them too much.

She worked at Prudential Insurance, a company she had started with in
Pennsylvania. Michael had a series of restaurant jobs.

Terri dropped to 110 pounds, dyed her hair blond and bought a bikini.
She told her friends she was afraid to ever be fat again. Her mother
worried she was too thin.

Michael worked nights, so Terri went to clubs with her brother, who
lived in the same apartment complex. When guys hit on her, she would
giggle, grab his arm and say, "I'm here with my boyfriend."

One night, Michael came home late and found her already in bed,
bundled up in sweat pants and a sweat shirt. He woke up later, peeled
back the covers to climb out of bed, and heard a thud. Terri had
collapsed facedown in the hallway.

* * *

It was 10 years before anyone heard of her.

At first, her mother and Michael visited together every day. Her
mother worked her arms and legs, moved her from bed to wheelchair,
wheelchair to bed. Michael took her to California, where doctors
implanted a brain stimulator in her head.

She spent part of the early '90s at Sabal Palms nursing facility in
Largo. A thin tube ran out of her stomach under her shirt. Every few
hours, someone turned her. Every morning, someone washed her, shaved
her legs, put on her makeup, her jewelry and her Paloma Picasso
perfume.

An aide took her to parks, museums and to Countryside Mall. Her
clothes came from the Limited and always matched. Michael took them
home and washed them. He combed her hair. On special occasions, he had
it curled.

On Valentine's Day 1993, her husband brought her two dozen roses. Her
parents arrived later. Her husband and father argued at her bedside.

After that, her husband and parents never visited at the same time.

She moved from one facility to another. After a while she didn't wear
perfume or makeup anymore. Someone cut her hair short. She gained
weight. She never had a bedsore. She lost her left little toe to a
bone infection.

She never spoke. Never walked. Her parents measured success in eye
contact and sounds. Her eyes opened and closed, darted around, rolled
back in her head. Her head turned left and right. Her mouth opened and
closed. She seemed to cry. She moaned. Sometimes she snored. Her hands
curled into fists, tighter, tighter.

Nurses laid her in the bed, propped her in a chair, strapped her in,
turned her. The light went off at night, came on in the morning.

Maybe it was dark in there, all those years. Maybe it was silent.

Maybe she glimpsed a moving balloon. Maybe she recognized her mother's
hands or her father's voice: "Listen to me. You see the balloon? You
see Mickey?"

Doctors leaned over her, "Open your eyes."

Her eyes opened. Maybe she saw nothing.

Sometimes, outside the window, there was noise. There were hymns and
Hail Marys, prayers and pleadings, there were candles, roses, a
plastic Jesus big as life, tablets bearing the Ten Commandments,
people speaking in tongues, crying, throwing salt, wearing headsets,
carrying flags, holding signs, falling to the ground, shouting into
bullhorns, pushing children in wheelchairs. There were friars in robes
and sandals, clergy in white collars, police, swarms of reporters,
cameras, gawkers, believers, would-be saviors carrying cups of water.

"Terri Shy-vo"

"Terri Shee-eye-vo"

All for her.

On March 18, a priest sprinkled holy water on her. A doctor removed
her feeding tube and closed the wound. A radio played.

She missed two wars and two presidents. She missed CD burners, cell
phones and low-rise jeans. She missed stirrup pants going out of
style. She missed the Starsky and Hutch movie. She missed the news
that George Michael is gay and that John Denver is dead.

She missed her sister's remarriage. She missed teasing Brian Schiavo
about his wedding, which the family suspected would never happen. She
missed the birth of a niece and nephew. She missed the deaths of her
grandmother, Michael's parents and both of her cats.

She missed eight years of litigation, decisions by 19 state judges,
30,000 pages of court documents,votes in the Florida Legislature and
Congress, and the results of the CNN/Gallup poll.

She missed the Internet, where she has her own Web site; where, in
blogs and message boards, her family is exalted and vilified; where,
in video, she raises her eyebrows and moans and maybe laughs. Her
mother still holds her face in her hands. And thousands of people she
has never met have something to say about it.

She missed nearly everything that is recognizable to the outside world
as her life.

She is survived by her husband, Michael Schiavo; her parents, Bob and
Mary Schindler; her brother, Bobby Schindler Jr.; and her sister,
Suzanne Vitadamo.

Times staff writers Vanessa Gezari, David Karp and William R. Levesque
contributed to this report. Other information came from court
transcripts, news reports and interviews with Bob Schindler Jr., Diane
Meyer, Sue Pickwell, Brian Schiavo, Scott Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's
former nurse Gloria Centonze and University of South Florida professor
Jay Wolfson.

[Last modified March 31, 2005, 12:26:17]

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