Posted on 03/14/2006 11:28:51 AM PST by KevinNuPac
Terri's Day challenges the nation to unify
Kevin Fobbs
March 13, 2006
Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life honoring Terri Schiavo with a day of remembrance challenges each and every one of us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves a question, do we respect ourselves, our families, our lives?
And if we are faced with the question of the possible certainty of death, does anyone truly know, or even have the faintest clue about, our wishes? That is the greatest good, the greatest legacy that Terri Schiavo's death and an annual "Terri's Day" can bring to our lives and to the celebration of the Culture of Life.
On March 18th, we as a nation will begin to grieve again, to reach into our hearts and feel with our collective national spirit what the Schindler family felt last year at this time as each moment since Terri was disconnected from the feeding lifeline, the moments crept by like hours and hours like days.
All of us have felt in some way that pain — even if it were only in the privacy of our loved one's home, hospital room, hospice or perhaps talking with an attorney and doctor attempting to make sense out of some fleeting comments made in a conversation perhaps voiced ten, twelve or even two decades earlier — not necessarily an expression of her true feeling about an end-of-life decision but merely an incidental musing in a long-forgotten side conversation.
For at least one million Americans, and quite possibly a whole lot more, this is an opportunity to voice an opinion through a pledge supporting a resolution in each state called "Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life." Each and every person who cares that your family, your spouse, your mother, your father, your sister or brother understands with clarity what you wish the end of life for you to be, with dignity and certainty should sign the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com and take the additional step to sign a Living Will — or as they call it at www.terrisfight.org, the Will to Live.
Some have asked why Americans should care about an annual Terri's Day. It is quite simple, we tend to keep turning the page on the Culture of Life because we feel it does not affect us. We tend to believe that seemingly universal belief that those who are handicapped, those who are not quite living a "perfect" life or by contemporary notion "ideal" then those lives are possibly disposable, marginal, not relevant, and part of the Culture of Death which embraces a "disposable society."
But life and our values for the Culture of Life are not disposable. Think about the young people today who would rather hurt themselves or even take their own lives rather than feel "imperfect" or the elderly person whose family is told by an insensitive health care professional while the stricken person struggles to cling to life, "she would be better off in another place," — just let her die, disconnect her from life, because her quality of life is not up to "contemporary standards. "
Why does celebrating the Culture of Life in Michigan become so essential for all of us in America? It is important for several reasons. Dr. Jack Kervorkian, also known as "Doctor Death" helped launch first in Michigan and then the nation the notion of the death culture. Secondly, and equally as important, at the May 12 event — just two days before Mother's Day — there will also be a "Mary's Moms" celebration of those women and mothers who have met challenges in standing up for some aspect of the Culture of Life.
This past weekend I sat at my cousin's funeral — or going home celebration, which more accurately describes it — thinking about the dearly departed and how she packed so much caring for others into her life even as she struggled with illness and advancing age. She was a wonderful woman who had lived through many, many challenges in her life, but in her 73 years she had met these challenges with dignity and had conveyed to her family when would be the right time to allow her to pass away.
Her daughter, who is a minister, spoke to the packed church about the times when, with all of her pain and then a stroke, the doctors had informed them that perhaps it was better to let her go. Yet that was three years ago that that occurred, and if the family had listened to the doctors and refused to see how she fought back and not only recovered but went back to volunteering at the church to feed and clothe the homeless. The medical professionals didn't care about an elderly lady who was on dialysis, but the family did and they knew better. Patricia lived three more years — years her extensive extended family considered "a gift from God."
So isn't part of the lesson of Terri's legacy and Terri's Day for families and loved ones to have a meaningful conversation with their family and to have the written document on hand as well that conveys the wishes clearly and concisely? You betcha.
As I sat in the church I thought of all of the families across the nation and the world who were sitting at their loved one's bedsides — or even standing outside of a hospital emergency room — overwhelmed with emotion, torn by what may be days of conflicting anguished decisions. I thought again of how out of death we may have the certainty of life. Terri's death reminded the nation that yes a state can and will starve you to death, and your family may be rendered helpless as you watch your loved one's precious life forces drain slowly away.
By signing the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com or going to www.terrisfight.org, you can learn about how to encourage your state legislature to establish March 31st as an official Terri's Day. Hold a Culture of Life Home Party or meet-and-greet to sign pledges, share ideas and support The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation as well as Culture of Life activities and events in your community or around the nation. Between now and March 31st you can make a dramatic difference for yourself, your family and for the nation. Stand up for the Culture of Life because one person, one life, one family can and does make a difference in America. Make the difference and be the difference today. America...The countdown for the Culture of Life has begun.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist for the Detroit News. He is also the daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385) © Copyright 2006 by Kevin Fobbs http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fobbs/060313
I agree. Today on The Nancy Grace Show some good reasons were given why Terri's case should have been investigated.
"Not just for Floridians. Tourist Ted Stith died while vacationing in Florida and ended up in a hospice. Ted wanted to live but his pleas to live fell on deaf ears.
What happened to tourist Ted Stith in Florida?
Read
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/020106StithDies.html"
I tell people about this story, and advise them to not even go to Florida for a visit, as Ted Stith did.
KING: What was it like?
SCHIAVO: Well, I spent the night with her. I could see as a nurse, and I could see that Terri was changing, her breathing was changing. It would be a little abnormal for a while, then go back to normal. So I spent the night with her. I stayed by her side. I talked and told her I loved her and caressed her arm. And we stayed through the night.
OfF:I've got a few problems with this so far. Michael states several times during this interview that he saw Terri changing, that there was a big change. One, this would tend to lead credence to what the Schindlers have said, that Terri was responsive even during this torture she endured. Second, even Michael is now admitting that there was something to change about Terri ie. that she wasn't as much of a "vegetable" as he has tried to convey all these years. My next question is why does he say, "I stayed with her" and in the next breath, "we"? Who's we? It doesn't really matter, but it's just one of those things where I'm wondering WTH Michael is really talking about.
About 7:00 in the morning, we got a phone call that the Schindlers, Bobby and Suzanne, wanted to come in. Mr. And Mrs. Schindler were on the compound at that time. Bobby and Suzanne wanted to come in and visit her. We left the room and we went back down to the room that I was staying in. And about quarter of 9:00, the administrator came down and said Michael, if you want to see Terri, you need to come now.
So I jumped up from the bed and I -- you know, I hurt my knee in all this. I was hobbling down the hall as quickly as I could. Awww, poor wittle Mikey got a boo-boo!! As I was there, the administrator said, well, we asked Bobby and Suzanne to leave because we're going to do an assessment and we noticed the change in Terri, but Suzanne left with the priest and Bobby got into an argument with the police officer.
She reiterated to me if you want to go, you need to come now. I had no time to sit and think about Bobby Schindler and what he was doing out there with the police officer. So my attorney quick said so me, do you want him in? And I said no. I had seconds when I got in the room to spend with Terri. I got around to the side of the bed. And I could see that Terri had taken a big change. I knelt down beside her, Larry. I cradled her in my arms and I told her I love her. It's still hard to this day. And I told her it's OK.
Michael gets something right. Felos was his attorney, and not Terri's attorney. I don't know how many times I've heard it implied that Felos was Terri's attorney. Oh, and Mike, the reason it's still hard to this day is because at some level, your conscience knows you abandoned Terri and then got the court's permission to murder her.
KING: And she passed away in your arms?
SCHIAVO: And she passed away in my arms.
***************************
They stated that Terri received $1.6 million. That is not correct. Terri's original award was reduced by 70 percent per the jury.
After all legal costs and medical costs were paid, $750,000 went into Terri's trust fund.
OK, let's do some math. $1,600,000 x 70% = $1,120,000 leaving to put in trust (according to Michael) $480,000 before paying any legal or medical costs incurred up to that point. Something ain't right with your math, Mike!
I can't get the link to open, or more precisely, the error is that the site can't be found.
Another lie by Mike.
I'm getting to this thread in spurts of time, and I've obviously misssed a lot. Can either one of you tell me how the interview with Crier went?
Thanks for the tip on the Schindler's Nancy Grace appearance, I didn't know about that in advance. My schedule shows it re-airing tonight twice: at 10:00pm ET/9:00pm Central, and then again late tonight at 1:00am ET/12 Midnight Central.
This is on CNN Headline News, not "regular" CNN.
Good catch, looking forward to catching the replay!
Nancy Grace had the whole hour with the Schindlers and she did an excellent job. I wish I had taped it.
When MS glibly mentions legal expenses, he is talking about half a million dollars "legally" embezzled by the Felos law firm with George Greer's approval. Terri was murdered with her own money.
I have a lot of links and excerpts in my personal files, that don't work now, for some reason, which is why I'm glad that I saved the excerpt with the link.
The question raised here certainly needs a hard look. It would be a huge help to find Terri's original x-rays. All we have is the bone scan report and that's not very useful for figuring when and how Terri got smashed up this way. I sometimes wonder if the injuries were not from several different incidents. The two really strange ones -- the compression fracture (broken back) at L1 and the bone bruise on her leg both indicate great force applied in places where such injuries are most unusual. I keep seeing Michael's knees on those spots, onTerri's back and leg, pinning her down...
It was indeed "interesting," LOL! Crier was argumentative and somewhat combative. She seemed most riled up at Bobby's describing Terri as "disabled," Crier did NOT like that AT ALL-- she called the use of the term a "politically astute maneuver." It was quite amusing (and revealing) how much she did NOT want to go there, to think of Terri as a disabled person!
She behaved as if she were examining a hostile witness in court, and interrupted every time someone tried to point out something that contradicted the media-approved story line.
But the Schindlers stayed calm (I was yelling at the TV, don't know how they did it!), and Bob very charmingly extracted a promise from her that she would actually READ THE BOOK (which she admitted she had not) and invite them back on in about a month after she'd seen the arguments and events laid out in the book. I was amazed at the whole family's grace under fire (yet again!).
As wrong and misguided as I think Crier is on this issue, I WILL give her credit for consistency, she could have easily done a fawning, softball interview that would have been "nice" but not consistent with her strident "the law has spoken and she should die" position last year.
(Forgive me for posting and running, but I have to leave for a while. When I get back I'm gonna hunt a transcript. If there isn't one, I'll do it myself over the next few days.)
There was a piece on the news this evening discussing Katie's impending motherhood. The newsreader sounded incredulous at the notion of total silence.
Seriously, what happens if something goes wrong? I'll bet Katie's family is really thrilled.
Photoshop is amazing. I've seen so many hillarious pics on here. I wouldn't be surprised if their photo was retouched.
Granted. And thank you for a fine report!
Usually when somebody posts and runs around here, it is a troll saying, "... blah blah you people blah blah blah delusional."
They think this is the ultimate in dazzling wit.
I hope you are saying "seriously" because I said something hysterically funny about it last time, even if you didn't laugh :-)
Seriously, I don't know what to do if you belong to some weird cult and don't accept conventional obstetric care. Call a psychiatrist, maybe.
Wendy Murphy lashed into Mike? Isn't she Allison Avrett's attorney? AA is Haleigh Poutre's real mom. Am I getting confused?
Not a bit. If it's the same Wendy Murphy, you're spot on.
And yes, that is the right Wendy Murphy, for sure. Ooh, I'm going to enjoy reading what she has to say.
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