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Friends: Husband's love means he must let go

By Rich McKay and Maya Bell
Sentinel Staff Writers

October 26, 2003

ST. PETERSBURG -- When doctors disconnected the feeding tube that has sustained Terri Schiavo for 13 years, her husband, Michael, was by her side.

He bent over, fixed her hair and gently kissed her forehead. It was the moment he had fought for -- what he saw as the beginning of the end of his 39-year-old wife's tragic existence.

"You would have to see him in the room with Terri. The way he looks at her. The way he kisses her. The way he fixes her hair," said Wilma Mackay, a friend who joined Schiavo on Oct. 15 for the vigil at Terri's bedside. "This is a man who still loves his wife. He never fell out of love with her, and because of that love he has to let her go."

The 40-year-old "gentle giant" described by Mackay and others is a far cry from the image Terri's parents have portrayed to millions of people via the Internet: a heartless monster willing, perhaps even eager, to let his wife starve to death so he can get her money.

Bob and Mary Schindler's campaign to save their daughter won an important victory last week when the Florida Legislature voted to give Gov. Jeb Bush the power to order Terri's feeding tube reattached.

The move left Michael Schiavo feeling betrayed, his friends and brothers say.

"He feels Terri has been done an injustice by the state of Florida," said Brian Schiavo, 44. "He's hung in there to do what he knows Terri wants."

Now Michael Schiavo, who has shunned the press and declined to be interviewed for this story, plans to make his case Monday night on CNN's Larry King Live.

Schiavo's family hopes viewers see a man who has fought as hard to preserve Terri's dignity as to end her life.

"He never wanted this for Terri. This was a private matter," Mackay said. "He said if by some miracle Terri would come back she would be mortified that she was front and foremost in the newspapers in the condition she was in. She was vain and a very beautiful woman. He never wanted this for her."

Youngest of 5

This is, Michael Schiavo's friends and family say, a rare and tragic love story.

Michael Schiavo is the youngest of five brothers and the biggest -- growing to a man of 6 feet 6 inches and 240 pounds. Now his hair and goatee are more gray than the blond of his youth.

He grew up in Levittown, Pa., in suburban Philadelphia, the son of Bill and Clara Schiavo. His father worked a steady white-collar job as a safety engineer for AT&T. His mother was a stay-at-home mom who could make meatloaf 100 different ways -- all of them good.

Bill Schiavo Jr., Michael Schiavo's 49-year-old brother, said the family was Lutheran and regularly attended Sunday services. The boys attended Bible camps in the summer and lived as their parents taught them: to believe in God, but to keep their deepest feelings and emotional pain to themselves.

"I know Mike has to be struggling with this, asking God all the questions," Bill Schiavo said. But talking to strangers -- to the media -- is something out of character for his brother.

At Woodrow Wilson High School, Michael Schiavo, handsome and confident, had a lot of girlfriends.

After graduating in 1980, he enrolled in Bucks County Community College and was smitten by Theresa "Terri" Schindler, a shy but striking girl who was the ultimate animal lover.

"He fell in love with her right away," Scott Schiavo, Michael's 42-year-old brother who lives in Fairless Hills, Pa. "She fit right in. When the five of us brothers got together, it was all jokes and laughs and picking on each other. Terri was more like a sister than a sister-in-law."

Michael and Terri dropped out of community college in 1982. She became an office clerk, and he went to work full time at a local McDonald's restaurant. Eager for a life away from the frozen North, Michael and Terri moved to Florida in 1986, living in a St. Petersburg Beach condominium owned by Terri's parents.

Friends said Michael Schiavo began managing restaurants. He worked late nights and saw little of his wife, who worked during the day for an insurance company. The Schindlers say Michael Schiavo was a controlling and, at times, abusive, husband. They say the couple talked of divorce, but Michael Schiavo's friends and family say none of that is true.

"They had a perfect marriage," Brian Schiavo said. "He adored her."

Brian Schiavo said he will never forget his brother's panicked phone call from the hospital the morning of Feb. 25, 1990.

'He was crying'

" 'She won't wake up! She won't wake up!' " Brian Schiavo recalled his brother shouting into the phone. "He was crying. I didn't understand what he was talking about, but you could hear his anguish."

Hours earlier, Terri Schiavo suffered a heart attack doctors say was brought on by a potassium deficiency. Her heart stopped beating, and doctors say her brain was starved of oxygen for about five minutes.

Terri has never been fully awake since then, doctors say. All but a few doctors who have examined Terri say it is only her reflexes that appear to respond to light, sound and touch. Those doctors say Terri died 13 years ago and that her body lived on without her. Michael Schiavo's friends and family say it took him seven years to come to grips with that.

He kept vigil at her side and, according to court records, sought aggressive rehabilitative therapy. He took her to California for experimental surgery, admitted her to a brain-injury center in Bradenton and hired an aide to take her to parks, to museums, to the beauty shop -- anything to stimulate her.

He took classes at St. Petersburg Community College in 1991 and began studying nursing -- so he could better care for his wife. Today, Michael Schiavo is a respiratory therapist and an emergency-room nurse at a Pinellas County hospital.

"He sees this stuff every day. He's an ER nurse," Brian Schiavo said. "It takes a special person to do that."

But there was nothing Michael Schiavo could do to draw Terri out of her silent cocoon and, over time, her husband accepted her doctors' prognosis. Her cerebral cortex was gone. She could not think, talk or reason and never would again.

It was his mother's death in 1997 that made him realize Terri needed to be allowed to die. In 1998, he asked Pinellas Circuit Judge George W. Greer to order his wife's twice-a-day artificial feedings halted, and after an emotional trial, Greer agreed, setting off an endless round of appeals by her parents.

"I never wanted Terri to die," Michael Schiavo wrote in a statement released Oct. 15. "I still don't. After more than seven years of desperately searching for a cure for Terri, the death of my own mother helped me realize that I was fooling myself. More important, I was hiding behind my hope, and selfishly ignoring Terri's wishes."

But the Schindlers and their supporters have described Michael Schiavo as anything but benevolent. He is, they say, selfishly hoping to end Terri's life so he can collect what's left of the malpractice money and begin a new life with his fiancée, Jodi Centonze.

The couple have a baby daughter and another child on the way, his brothers said.

Bonnie Rowley, one of Michael Schiavo's friends, said he describes Centonze as a godsend and a patient woman who understands his devotion to Terri.

Centonze is a stay-at-home mom, said Rowley who met Michael Schiavo through her longtime friend. Rowley said the life the couple share is hardly carefree. Michael works long hours, visits Terri often and has spent most of his remaining free time with lawyers and in courtrooms.

"He really doesn't have a life," Rowley said. "He can't go on until this is over."

Malpractice money

"It's the money," Scott Schiavo said. "That's when all this garbage happened."

The Schiavos say the money from a malpractice lawsuit awarded in November 1992 caused the split with the Schindlers.

Terri received $700,000 put in a trust for her care, and Michael Schiavo received $300,000 for loss of companionship. He used some of his money to build a house and refurbish his mother's retirement apartment.

Michael Schiavo claims that Bob Schindler wanted a portion of the money. The Schindlers claim that Michael's efforts to bring Terri back waned after he got his share.

The Schiavos say the Schindlers have battled ever since to wrest guardianship from Michael Schiavo. The courts have repeatedly found him to be a dutiful guardian. The courts also have decided Terri has no chance for recovery.

Now the money from the judgment is nearly gone, with just $50,000 left to pay for Terri's care, according to George Felos, Michael Schiavo's lawyer, who says his legal bills haven't been paid in more than a year.

'He was there for me'

It is the portrayal of Michael Schiavo as a money-grubbing opportunist that frustrates friend Russ Hyden, 56, a Gainesville Realtor, who met Michael Schiavo in Clearwater in 1991.

Hyden's wife was pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She rejected chemotherapy to have the baby and died at age 39. Hyden said Schiavo helped him through his grief.

"I couldn't have gotten through that without him. He was there for me every minute," Hyden said. "He's a gentle giant -- a generous, gentle giant."

And, Hyden is convinced, Michael Schiavo thinks about Terri every day.

"He is living every day knowing that the wife he loved is no longer here, but the body remains," Hyden said. "That's the worst possible nightmare I could ever imagine living with."

Sean Mussenden of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Rich McKay can be reached at rmckay@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5470. Maya Bell can be reached at mbell@orlandosentinel.com or 305-810-5003.