Easter Sunday at Pinellas Park
It is a long read but fairly accurate in describing the atmosphere as all waited helplessly, most knowing no more help would come, no more heroes, no Cavalry riding to the rescue...
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The legal battle over the life of Terri Schiavo may have ended, but a thick, fervent crowd remains in the makeshift encampment outside the Woodside Hospice House here.
In numbers, they were not as great on Easter as they were on the previous three days, when the legal and public relations battle came to its bitter climax. But like soup simmered for hours, what remains is a concentrated stock of the angriest and most devoted, the prayerful and the publicity hungry.
''No, we're not going to go home,'' said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. ''Terri is not dead until she's dead.''
Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.
~Snip~
Only about two dozen people turned up for a dawn Easter service outside the hospice. But by early afternoon, as the muggy heat intensified, the crowd had swelled to over 100, still far fewer than in previous days, but louder, angrier, more demonstrative.
An emotional cluster of worshipers applauded the news late Sunday afternoon that Ms. Schiavo had received communion -- a few drops of wine on her tongue -- and been given Catholic last rites for a second time.
Interviews with more than three dozen protesters found people who had come came from across the country, though most lived within an hour's drive of the hospice. The farther they had traveled, the more likely they were to express a deep religious need to be here. Tales of personal miracles, like Mr. Tierney's, were not uncommon. The street the hospice is on is one of countless dead ends in the Florida coastal sprawl, a narrow strip of concrete leading off a broad thoroughfare lined by convenience stores, strip malls and fast-food franchises. On the corner is a bank. Beyond that, a few small office buildings, the hospice, then a school, a trailer park and a riot of foliage.
THE SCHIAVO CASE: THE SCENE; Protesters With Hearts on Sleeves and Anger on Signs
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