Here's a new article re: the TSS-Foundation re: Ave Maria University
Ave Maria plans to honor Schiavo
Scholarship is a 'priority' for parents of deceased woman
By Joan D. LaGuardia, jlaguardia@news-press.com
Published by news-press.com on July 9, 2005
One day after Gov. Jeb Bush declared an end to the state's inquiry into Terri Schiavo's collapse 15 years ago, Ave Maria University began a scholarship in her name.
The lay-run Roman Catholic University in east Collier County will award the scholarship to young men interested in becoming priests.
Robert Schindler, father of the brain-damaged Florida woman who died March 31 after removal of her feeding tube, said Friday the scholarship represents the future of his family's right-to-life efforts.
"Terri's story is not over, by far. Terri's story is a wake-up call to this country," said Schindler, 67, who was raised as a Catholic in a Philadelphia church his grandparents helped establish.
Schindler said attorneys are working to restructure the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation to provide money to help others in end-of-life battles.
"There is a litany of things we will be doing once we get everything in place," he said, declining to be specific. The foundation was set up to pay Schindler's legal fees in the five-year fight to keep Michael Schiavo, their daughter's husband, from removing the feeding tube.
Schindler, his wife, Mary, and son, Robert Jr., were at the university Wednesday when they were told State Attorney Bernie McCabe concluded there was nothing "indicative of criminal activity" in how Schiavo's husband handled her care.
"I really haven't had an opportunity to fully study what the report said," Robert Schindler said Friday at the university about five miles south of Immokalee.
"In our lives, this is a priority right now," he said, referring to the scholarship and foundation.
During the final days of the legal battle over Schiavo, Schindler met Ave Maria students outside their daughter's Pinellas Park hospice where supporters gathered for prayer vigils.
Their legal fight also brought them into contact with Joseph Grady, president of My Jesus Mercy Ministries and father of an Ave Maria student. Grady founded the scholarship and made its first donation.
The amount was not revealed, but university staff hope to build the fund to at least $3 million, said university spokesman Brandon Blackmur. It will award at least one scholarship this fall.
Tuition and board at the university are about $18,000 for the fall and spring semesters.
"Terri would often say, 'Where there is life, there is hope,' " said Grady. "If we can bring future priests and bishops out of Ave Maria University with this same ideal, then her life-given gift will continue."
Schindler said what the university is doing is marvelous. "It's great to have an institution willing to take on something like this," he said. "We feel that Terri was chosen by God to combat evil, and what a fine way to pay tribute to her life."
Ave Maria's goal is to educate future priests, teachers, attorneys and journalists to carry traditional Catholic values, such as pro-life stands, into the American workplace.
"Terri's death was a tragedy not only to her family but for the entire country," said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, university provost. "But it can also be a new beginning in renewing the conscience of Americans, and this type of pro-life scholarship will certainly contribute to that."
FV--I just know that everyone who, in positions of authority, could have helped stop michael the monster, felos, bushnell and greer (among others) Terri, gotten her out of a house of death and into the arms of her beloved family (the real family, the ones who loved her, not the ones who used her therapy money for lawyers to kill her), are going to face such an onslaught of justice from our Father in Heaven, as revenge is his, that it will be totally awesome.