Posted on 03/20/2005 6:06:29 PM PST by Former Military Chick
He's been vilified on Web sites and talk shows. He's been called a wife-abuser, an adulterer, a money-grubbing murderer.
Death threats have been left in his mailbox.
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.
"He's already lost," he said. "He's already lost Terri."
Social with friends, but reclusive
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.
They had been married a little over five years.
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."
Death and defining moments
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.' "
She was kept "peaceful and out of pain" until she died, Scott said.
Then their father died.
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."
This particular fight has not come without a price.
"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."
Love and moral dilemmas
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."
Sympathy for Terri's parents
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."
He said Terri would "always be a part of my life.
"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?
"What kind of government is this? This is a human being. This is not right."
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.
"This is her time...," he said. "I will love her and I will hold her hand."
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Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 610-701-7635 or sbauers@phillynews.com.
Congress tries again to stop Schiavo death
Timeline of the Terri Schiavo Case
Recent court rulings and other materials related to the Terri Schiavo case:
5 Wishes a Site that helps one prepare if one is unable to speak for themselves.
The fact he didn't demonstrates how CORRUPT he is.
How much did HE get of Terri's money???
Thanks though, for your information.
Yet again, I think we have more questions that should have been answered before her feeding tube was removed.
Lots more questions due to that codeblue site you posted.
For God's sake, why don't that put that tube back in while they figure this out???
One thing that does not seem in much question is that Terri has much better brain function than is portrayed by her would-be killers and the MSM. The CT scan refutes their (evil) argument that Terri is too disabled to live. As the doc says, this is murder.
Murder, following long -- and I'll bet criminal -- abuse.
The CT scan doesn't add much. I don't see a name label on it, it's blurry, and it's flipped backwards. Plus it's only one image out of what is probably 15 or 20 cuts through the brain, where are the other cuts? People will read into this CT what they want.
If any of this is truly in dispute, the only course that is sane and humane is to test Terri in any way that might be useful.
There's no hurry about killing her. In fact, when people are in such an all-fired hurry to kill a perfectly harmless disabled women, it only attracts the deepest suspicion about their motives.
Thank you for posting it. Terri is clearly NOT brain dead, a point that the much of the public hasn't grasped. If she was brain dead, there would be no controversy. I have some misgivings about the codeblue doc, he seems willing to stick his neck out based on incomplete information, something that most doctors hate to do.
If any of this is truly in dispute, the only course that is sane and humane is to test Terri in any way that might be useful.
There's no hurry about killing her. In fact, when people are in such an all-fired hurry to kill a perfectly harmless disabled women, it only attracts the deepest suspicion about their motives.
I have some disagreements with you here. This case has dragged on for years, her tube has been pulled and re-inserted twice, so using terms like "all-fired hurry" don't seem to fit. In fact, no matter how things turn out I think our justice system has done a disservice to all parties involved.
The other problem is the use of the term "kill". I have had and still have many patients with feeding tubes. Often they are inserted when the family (and I) has hope. A lot of times the family will want tube feedings for a while to see if there's any recovery of swallowing function or consciousness. Over time though it sometimes becomes clear the chance of recovery is negligible and the family will decide to stop the tube feedings, believing this is what their ill relative would want. I would not agree with calling this "killing" although you could certainly argue the opposite. And I sure as hell don't want the government involved in that decision.
2 or 3 times in your post, you state "the family" decides what happens to their loved one. That's not happening here, the only person calling the shots is Terri's so-called husband, who we all know is living with another woman and has 2 kids by her. Terri was in the state that she's in for several years before Michael suddenly remembered that Terri wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive by artificial means. Something is rotten in Denmark.
Speaking of Denmark, do they still have those "windmills"?
Don't we both wish. But it was government that enabled this whole sordid incident and deprived Terri of her property and her rights. There is no recourse for her except review by a higher government body.
I am not missing the big picture.
Sometimes, though, when you're looking at the forest, you don't see the trees.
No.
He's reviewed evidence the way a judge in a courtroom is supposed to do, according to the letter of the law.
It appears that those who decry Judge Greer's decision have chosen to believe 'one' side's story....
Have you read documents "posted" by both sides?
"But if she dies and he's lying, how in Hades does that get redressed?"
Hades would be a good place to start... if the religious opposition truely believes in heaven and hell, surely they would know that he will get his just deserts IF he is lying?
I'm confused. If he loves her and will hold her hand, who will hold his "fiancee's" hand? Or the hands of the children he's had with this other woman?
The only difference between Michael Schiavo and Scott Peterson is Michael managed to get a lawyer to do the killing for him...eventually.
How does Scott reconcile the total devotion of Michael for Terri with the fact that Michael admitted on a deposition that he was having extra marital affairs as long ago as 1990 BEFORE Terri collapsed??? Ironic that the year he was having an affair, Terri mysteriously collapsed from a "chemical" imbalance. Scott Peterson did the same and was convicted for his wife's death. He swore Laci knew all about his affair and was "okay with it." Sound familiar?
Brother's don't always know everything about their own siblings.
The only problem is that two nurses testified in an affidavit (not allowed by Judge Greer) that Terri was able to take Jello and pudding through a baby bottle. The fact that she swallows her own saliva also points to the possibility of rehabilitation. The reason she was not allowed to receive any further foods by mouth was due to her husband's adament insistance that no therapy of any kind be given to his wife.
This fact has me troubled. I have heard of family members wanting to PUSH for therapy, but not many who want to BLOCK such therapy.
BS My grandfather became seriously ill and the hospital put a bright yellow "do not resuscitate" band on his wrist. Clearly visible. He died a year later at age 97.
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