A thousand words about the Terri Schiavo you
never knew
Careless Whisper was her favorite song. She rode horses.
She saved birthday cards. She didn't go to prom.
By KELLEY BENHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published November 13, 2003
She was named Theresa Marie, after Saint
Theresa of Avila, but they called her that
only when they were mad, which was
almost never.
She drew pictures of dogs and horses,
Bambi and Thumper, and her Labrador
puppy, Bucky.
She grew up in a four-bedroom colonial on
a half acre in the suburbs of northeast
Philadelphia.
Overweight most of her life, she would cry
when she had to buy school clothes.
She loved to peel skin after a sunburn.
She could keep a secret.
Her eyes are brown.
She attended Our Lady of Good Counsel school, where short, stout Sister
Idalea knew the best way to pull a kid's hair to make it hurt.
She loved a boy named V.J. Mandez, but he did not love her back.
She learned to drive in a Ford Country Squire station wagon.
She got cold easily. She kept a blanket on the bed even in summer.
She once ran into the house crying because she had run over a rabbit. No one
could console her. Her father went outside, came back, and said she was
mistaken, there was no dead rabbit in the road. When she finally calmed down
and left the room, her dad said, "Man, she nailed it."
She drank nearly a gallon of iced tea a day.
She read Danielle Steele novels. In their defense, she would say, "They are not
Harlequins."
She liked to drive her T-top Trans Am past construction sites. She liked
blonds.
She slept with her back to the window, so if she was murdered in the night she
would not see it coming.
She weighed 200 pounds when she graduated from Archbishop Wood High
School.
On her first real date, with a guy named Michael Schiavo, her brother and his
friend stood on the front lawn and cheered.
She met Michael her second semester at Bucks County Community College.
He was a year older, a foot taller and blond. He was the first guy who ever
noticed her.
She has her mother's bushy eyebrows.
At Christmas, she would sneak around the house trying to find where the
presents were hidden. Her father set up a train around the tree.
They said grace before dinner and had roast beef on Sundays.
She wrote a letter to John Denver asking him to sing at her wedding. He never
wrote back.
She was not a great cook. She made a banana cake with green bananas and
laughed when everyone told her how horrible it was.
She clerked at Prudential Insurance in Pennsylvania and in Florida, but wanted
a job with animals.
She always made someone else kill the roaches.
Michael proposed after five months of dating. Her parents thought they were
too young.
She was 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 a horse and
carriage. The tuxedos were gray.
She collected Precious Moments figurines.
When her Christmas tree was crooked, she called her dad for help. He told
her to go buy a tree straightener. She called all over looking for one.
Before college she lost more than 50 pounds on a NutriSystem diet.
When she was about 7, her brother Bobby threw a brick at her head and
made her cry.
Bobby locked her in a suitcase once and couldn't get her out. He ran for their
mom while the suitcase jumped up and down, screaming.
She drove 30 minutes out of her way five days a week to visit her grandmother
in a nursing home.
Her friends teased her that at the beach she was always the one the sea gull
pooped on. "Don't lie next to me," they would say.
She worked at a dry cleaner in high school.
The movie Jaws made her cry. She was terrified of the ocean for the rest of her
life.
Her gerbils were always getting loose and winding up in the air conditioning unit
in the basement.
She was born Dec. 3, 1963, the first child of Robert and Mary Schindler.
Robert was a salesman, mostly. Mary stayed home with Terri, and then Bobby
and Suzanne.
On Saturdays, she went to Mass with her mother.
She was not strong and would not work out.
She bought her brother Bobby his first Bruce Springsteen record, Darkness on
the Edge of Town, in 1978. He's been a fanatic ever since.
She always wanted to be a veterinarian and wrote TV zookeeper Joan Embry
for advice. Embry said to finish college.
An average student, she dropped out of junior college.
She saw doctors for a benign lump in her breast, a wart on her toe and dizzy
spells.
As a child she would spend hours in her room arranging her stuffed animals.
She loved Wham!
When Bucky the Labrador collapsed, she performed mouth-to-nose
resuscitation on him. He died in her arms.
She and Michael lived in her parents' basement in Pennsylvania, then in a
condo her parents owned in Florida. They paid rent, $400 a month, when they
could.
She saw An Officer and a Gentleman four times in one day.
She quit using birth control in 1989 but did not get pregnant.
She is allergic to Benadryl.
She had an intolerance to salad and dairy products.
The night before her wedding, her father sat on the floor of her bedroom and
watched her sleep. He was crying. She knew he was there, but never told him.
She loved the TV show Starsky and Hutch so much that she and her friend
Sue Pickwell wrote hundreds of letters to Paul Michael Glaser. He, or his
people, eventually wrote back.
At 26, she was 5 feet 4 and weighed 110 pounds. When she took off her shirt
at night, Michael could see her bones.
She dyed her hair blond and bought a bikini.
She went to clubs with her brother because Michael worked nights. When
guys hit on her, she would giggle, grab her brother and say, "I'm here with my
boyfriend."
She had neat handwriting.
She had a good tan.
When she rode on the back of Bobby's motorcycle, she held on so tight she
left marks on his skin.
Early on Feb. 25, 1990, she collapsed on the floor in the hallway outside her
bedroom, gasping.
- Information for this story came from interviews with Terri Schiavo's brother,
Bob Schindler Jr., and her childhood friend Diane Meyer, and from court
transcripts, Newsday and the Associated Press.
Floridian headlines
A thousand words about the Terri Schiavo you never knew
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/11/13/Floridian/A_thousand_words_abou.shtml