Michael Schiavo: A refusal to quit in the face of threats, anguish and vitriol.

He's been vilified on Web sites and talk shows. He's been called a wife-abuser, an adulterer, a money-grubbing murderer.

Throngs of protesters have waved signs and chanted outside his house in Clearwater, Fla., and they have gathered again.

Sometimes, even Michael Schiavo's friends have wondered why, in the face of all that, he didn't just walk away.

It would have been easier for him to relinquish guardianship of his severely incapacitated wife, Terri, to her parents.

So why not give it up, leave Terri's feeding tube in, let her parents care for her? After all, he is living with another woman now and they have two children.

"Because he's sticking by what he promised," Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, said in a recent interview. "He wants to honor the last thing he can give to her."

Physicians have testified that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and will never improve. Michael Schiavo has said his wife told him she would not want to live like this.

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, formerly of Huntingdon Valley, say she is responsive and can be helped. They say that, as a Catholic, she would choose life at all costs.

On Friday, Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, which has been in place for all but two brief stretches of time since she collapsed in 1990, was removed. It could be brief this time as well. The House is expected today to consider a Senate bill that would allow Schiavo's parents to take their case to federal court.

Throughout the protracted legal battle, the Schindlers have made their religious views, their personal anguish, and their mistrust of Michael Schiavo a public cause.

Intensely private, according to his family and friends, Michael Schiavo has rarely spoken publicly about the matter, out of respect for his wife's privacy. Through his brother, he declined to be interviewed for this story.

However, in recent days he has gone on national TV to reiterate that Terri would not have wanted to live like this and criticize politicians for getting involved in a deeply personal matter.

His brother and friends also have decided that it's time to speak up. The mudslinging, they said, has become too ugly, too nasty.

"I have a friend who I think has been maligned," said Russ Hyden of Gainesville, Fla.

"We're tired of it. We're done. It's time people know who he is," said Scott Schiavo, who lives in Levittown near where the brothers were raised.

The thing is, even if Michael Schiavo wins the final court battle, and Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is removed, he really hasn't won at all, Scott said.

His brother and friends describe Michael Schiavo as social within his circle of friends, but otherwise almost reclusive. Except for the No Trespassing sign on his front lawn and the armed guards he's occasionally hired to protect his home, he's tried to grasp whatever shreds of normalcy he can.

His friends don't see the demon that protesters who have hurled insults at him do.

Wilma Mackay, a 65-year-old retiree from Palm Harbor, Fla., who watched her husband and brother die of cancer, sees a man who is "the epitome of loyalty."

Bonnie Rowley of Largo, Fla., a friend for about a decade, sees someone who "stands strong on what he believes in, and that is Terri Schiavo. If I needed a health-care advocate, he'd be my first choice. I know he'd be there till the end, and he'd give it one hell of a fight."

Michael Schiavo, 41, was the youngest of five boys. Six-foot-seven, athletic and model-handsome, he met Terri Schindler at Bucks County Community College in 1982.

She had graduated from Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, he from Woodrow Wilson High School in Bristol Township.

Married two years later, they moved to Florida, where, early on the morning of Feb. 25, 1990, Michael Schiavo has testified, he awoke to the sound of a thud and found Terri on the floor in the hallway, unconscious.

He has spent three times as long - the last 15 years - first trying to bring her back, then trying to let her go, his friends and brother say.

In the beginning, they say, Schiavo was relentless in his search for his wife's cure. She underwent various therapies.

He rented a house large enough for him and Terri's parents, who had moved to the area.

He made sure she was dressed every day. He applied her makeup and dabbed on perfume, Rowley said.

He went to school to become a nurse, "because he wanted to take care of Terri," Scott said. "He swore that he could get Terri better... . One doctor said: 'Mike, you know what? There's nothing else we can do. The next time Terri gets sick, why don't you just let nature take its course?' And Mike wouldn't do it."

Many of the defining moments of Michael Schiavo's life have revolved around death.

In 1988, his grandmother was hospitalized with a serious illness. She had signed a "do not resuscitate" order, Scott Schiavo said, but when she worsened in the middle of the night, no one looked at her records.

"It took them I don't know how long to get her breathing again. They stuck a ventilator down her throat." To little avail. "She was brain-dead," Scott Schiavo recalled.

All the family could do was wait until medications that kept her heart beating wore off. It took a day and a half, he said.

After the funeral, the family went to the Buck Hotel in Feasterville. Scott and Terri were sitting next to each other at a large table, where the conversation turned to how upset their grandmother would have been at her final hours.

Terri turned to him, Scott Schiavo said, "and she said, 'Not me, no way, I don't want that.' She says, 'If I'm ever like that, oh, don't let me. Pull that tube out of me.' " Scott Schiavo said he testified about the incident in 2000.

Several years after Terri collapsed, Michael Schiavo's mother was diagnosed with cancer.

Eventually, medical complications required the removal of her feeding tube, Scott said. "It's not like we said: 'Turn it off.' "

Eventually, Scott said, his brother realized he would have to let Terri go, too.

The Schindlers - who did not respond to a request for an interview made through their lawyer - have been distrustful of his motives partly because, they have said, no one mentioned Terri's wishes until years after her collapse.

But, Scott said, "it's not something you think about while Mike's trying to save her life... . It's something that people do when there's nothing left to do."

"I give Mike all the credit in the world, because I would have snapped already. I know how bad it hurts me when I hear people talking about him and downing him," Scott Schiavo said.

Most of all, Scott said, "the thing that tears him up is he worries at nighttime, if he's working. He's afraid for the kids and Jodi."

Michael Schiavo met his girlfriend, identified in court records as Jodi Centonze, about a decade ago.

Initially, Rowley, who was Centonze's friend, didn't know what to think. The court battles had not yet heated up, but she knew the situation with Terri.

When Rowley met Michael Schiavo, what she noticed first was his "great smile, a gentle smile."

Gradually, her respect grew. "He could have stepped off and divorced Terri five years ago, when this really hit the court. And got married and started his family that way," Rowley said.

The couple has two toddlers - a daughter and a son. Michael Schiavo works in the medical unit of the Pinellas County Jail.

Both Centonze and Michael Schiavo had to face "their own moral dilemmas as far as having children out of wedlock," Rowley said. "But the two of them weren't getting any younger... So does that make him a bad person because he did that? Did he fluff his responsibility to Terri at any point? No."

It is Centonze, Scott Schiavo said, who now does all Terri's laundry. "She's been unbelievable. She supported Mike in everything he did... . She's gone with Mike to visit Terri. She's helped Mike clean Terri up."

Centonze has been a flashpoint for Michael Schiavo's critics who think it is a reason to disqualify him to be Terri's guardian. His living with Centonze "abrogates the covenant of marriage," said Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, who was among the demonstrators outside the hospice on Friday.

Looking back on it now, Scott thinks his brother "just wanted somebody to love him." He equates it with a widower who remarries, "but it doesn't mean that that person stopped loving their spouse that passed on. Mike was very lonely. I mean, he was a 26-year-old kid" when Terri collapsed.

"It's hard to imagine the circumstances he lived under," friend Russ Hyden said. "There was no closure, yet there was no companionship either. That's the worst possible scenario."

Hyden had met Schiavo in 1991. Hyden's pregnant wife had been diagnosed with cancer. A mutual friend thought they "might have something in common. And we did."

But it was more than that they were both going through "life-changing ordeals," Hyden said. "We both liked to play a little golf. We enjoyed each other's company."

Hyden scoffs at the accusations about Schiavo taking the malpractice money awarded to Terri. "If there was so much money, where was that money when I first met Mike? Why wasn't he driving a big car and living in a big home? He was driving a Jeep and living in an apartment."

Hyden's wife lived for almost three more years. He and Schiavo spoke or saw each other several times a week.

"He was always great with my kids," Hyden said. Hyden's daughter was 2, his son 7, and Michael brought them gifts.

"He spent a great deal of time helping me put my family back together," Hyden said. "Perhaps it was because his had fallen so tragically apart."

In a way, Michael Schiavo has said he can sympathize with Terri's parents. "I have children, and, you know, I couldn't even fathom what it would be like to lose a child," he said in an interview on Nightline last week.

But, he continued, "they know the condition Terri is in. They were there in the beginning. They heard the doctors. They know that Terri's in a persistent vegetative state. They testified to that at the original trial. Fifteen years - you've got to come to grips with it sometime."

"And to sit here and be called a murderer and an adulterer by people that don't know me, and a governor stepping into my personal, private life, who doesn't know me either? And using his personal gain to win votes, just like the legislators are doing right now, pandering to the religious right, to the people up there, the antiabortion people, standing outside of Tallahassee?

In a way, Michael Schiavo's world still revolves around Terri. He calls every day and visits several times a week, Scott Schiavo said. He can still talk to her, even if she doesn't talk back.

Michael Schiavo yesterday told CNN that he had a "sense of relief" now that the feeding tube had been removed and he promised to "stay by her side" till the end.

"Someone on a different thread pointed out this link: http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html and I'm glad they did because it's the most unbiased look at the case I've seen"

You've GOT to be kidding me.

I have to say that in spite of the guy's protests at being uninterested and unbiased, that's one of the -most- biased representations of this case I've ever seen.

Look at his timeline! How in God's name does he jump from January 1993 to May, 1998, with only one entry (transferrence to a nursing home) in between? How the hell can he leave out THIS and purport to be objective!?

1993

Feb - Michael Schiavo denies recommended rehabilitation treatment.

Feb - Schiavo and Terri's parents have falling out regarding lack of therapy for Terri.

Feb - Schiavo withholds medical information from Terri's parents.

Feb - Schiavo posts Do not Resuscitate order in Terri's medical chart.

Jun - Schiavo threatens Schindler family with lawsuit.

Aug - Schiavo orders medical staff not to treat Terri for potentially fatal infection.

Sep - Bob and Mary Schindler petition courts to remove Schiavo as Terri's guardian.

Nov - Schiavo admits in deposition that he knew withholding treatment of infection could result in Terri's death.

I'm sorry, it's absurd to leave facts like that out of the equation, especially given that they immediately follow his being awarded large sums of cash which he promised to and was bound to use for her rehabilitation. Please, tell me that you can see that a claim to being objective is ludicrous in light of leaving facts like that out by casually skipping over five years of the timeline which just happens to be the most damaging to Schiavo's case!

Qwinn

Howlin's concerns are about Congress over stepping their bounds

Ah yes. The judiciary should always have the final say on U.S. policy..right? Once any judge decides anything...no matter how ludicrous, the legislative branch simply has no power to to put their 2 cents in the political forum....Wrong.

Here are a few thoughts from mark levin on this issue:

Some other posts today from Levin below that on the subject of Legislative vs. Judicial powers.

HERE WE ARE [K. J. Lopez] Cover for the feminist Left for not being a defender of the rights of Terri Schiavo: (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0503190165mar19,1,6639786.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true)

Marc Spindelman, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University who specializes in bioethics, said the message sent by the subpoenas is chilling.

"What's next? If Congress doesn't like it, are they going to subpoena individual women to testify before Congress in order to keep them from exercising their rights to an abortion?" he said. "What about individuals who want to terminate a respirator? Is Congress going to bring them in and start asking them questions? Who couldn't be dissuaded from exercising their constitutional rights in certain ways in the face of a federal subpoena? The spectacle of this--it's unbelievable."

***********

RE: RE: HERE WE ARE [Mark R. Levin] This is a typical slippery slope argument, applied only to Congress but not to the judiciary. I could ask, for instance: what next, will judges, on the word of a putative spouse, deny nutrition to alzheimer patients who, on their own, would surely die of starvation? And what of the standard of proof and evidence? There's nothing in writing here, no living will, no witnesses -- just heresay. Is that the standard judges will now use, and if they can use this standard on a matter of life and death, what about wills, trust, estates? Are they all to be decided now based on oral, unwitnessed representations?

***********

AND WHAT'S TO STOP CONGRESS FROM... [Mark R. Levin] And what's to stop Congress from calling women who might seek abortions? Well, what's to stop Congress from doing anything stupid or outrageous? We, the people. Even those who oppose abortion would likely react very negatively to such a spectacle. Congress has called witnessed who've had abortions who regret having had the procedure and others who've argued against prohibiting, for instance, partial birth abortion. This has been done without exploitation or abuse. But the question the critics of the House refuse to ask and answer is who or what can check a judiciary that, more and more, is making policy decisions? If not Congress, than no one. And in many cases, I expect that's perfectly fine by them.

***********

IT’S THE JUDGES, STUPID [Mark R. Levin] I see this more as a struggle between the elected branches and the judiciary. The Florida legislature and Governor Jeb Bush did, in fact, attempt to intervene in the Schiavo case a few years back, and prevent the removal of her feeding tube. But the Florida Supreme Court ruled, among other things, that the governor had no such power. Yesterday, Florida Superior Court Judge Greer, in essence, said the same about congressional authority. He quickly dismissed the relevance of the House subpoenas with this statement: "I have had no cogent reason why the committee should intervene." The state judge, therefore, contended that the House had to convince him of the legitimacy of its subpoena to compel witnesses to appear so it can conduct hearings. I've heard nothing from academia about this stunning judicial assertion.

As the courts continue to usurp the policy- and law-making power of the elected branches, and offend an ever-growing number of Americans and their representatives, we can expect the tension between the elected branches and the judiciary to grow. The judges have no one to blame but themselves. In the eyes of many, they have pursued a course that delegitimizes their institution and calls into question their motives. And while the courts set themselves up as the final arbiters of all conflicts between themselves and the other branches, at least the House, in this first test of constitutional wills, does not appear ready to surrender. After all, if it won't protect its own constitutional prerogatives, who will?

The more the House resists judicial usurpation, the more unhinged its critics in academia and the mainstream media will become -- accusing it of politicizing the independent judiciary, intimidating judges, and so forth. The reason for this is straightforward: the judiciary is the means by which the Left has been most successful in recent decades in imposing its agenda on society. They've gone to extraordinary lengths to obstruct President Bush's judicial nominations, including the unconstitutional use of filibusters in the Senate, and they will be equally zealous in the House.

***********

A ROLE FOR CONGRESS [Mark R. Levin] No one questions the power of Congress to issue subpoenas to pursue its core function, i.e., to conduct hearings and investigate issues where there might be a legislative purpose. And clearly, in this case, Congress is genuinely interested in taking up the issue of protecting disabled and incapacitated people. And Congress is certainly free to use the most widely known example of court-ordered starvation as a basis for its inquiry. If its purpose is also to save from starvation the person at the center of its inquiry, that's perfectly legitimate as well.

And when Congress issues subpoenas, they are to be honored by the recipients, or they face possible prosecution for contempt of Congress. Compliance with congressional subpoenas is every bit as critical to maintaining the rule of law under our constitutional system as is compliance with a court order. And a state trial judge is not free to blithely dismiss such congressional action, whether he agrees with it or not. He stands in the same shoes as others in this regard, i.e., he cannot take affirmative steps to contravene a congressional subpoena. Even if one wishes to descend into some kind of balancing test, the state trial judge could have easily prevented a constitutional confrontation by delaying his order until Congress could at least conduct hearings, thereby ensuring that the authority of both branches of government were not offended. Instead, the state trial judge did what too many judges do, i.e., he vetoed a decision or action by Congress. The mainstream media will ignore this aspect of what has occurred, as it already has, preferring to regurgitate the shrill accusations of academics and lawyers who worship before the bench. Posted at 10:53 AM

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