May angels seen and unseen continue to guard, protect, and strengthen you.
Posted on 11/13/2003 4:00:26 AM PST by amdgmary
A thousand words about the Terri Schiavo you never knew
Careless Whisper was her favorite song. She rode horses. She saved birthday cards. She didn't go to prom.
By KELLEY BENHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published November 13, 2003
She was named Theresa Marie, after Saint Theresa of Avila, but they called her that only when they were mad, which was almost never.
She drew pictures of dogs and horses, Bambi and Thumper, and her Labrador puppy, Bucky.
She grew up in a four-bedroom colonial on a half acre in the suburbs of northeast Philadelphia.
Overweight most of her life, she would cry when she had to buy school clothes.
She loved to peel skin after a sunburn.
She could keep a secret.
Her eyes are brown.
She attended Our Lady of Good Counsel school, where short, stout Sister Idalea knew the best way to pull a kid's hair to make it hurt.
She loved a boy named V.J. Mandez, but he did not love her back.
She learned to drive in a Ford Country Squire station wagon.
She got cold easily. She kept a blanket on the bed even in summer.
She once ran into the house crying because she had run over a rabbit. No one could console her. Her father went outside, came back, and said she was mistaken, there was no dead rabbit in the road. When she finally calmed down and left the room, her dad said, "Man, she nailed it."
She drank nearly a gallon of iced tea a day.
She read Danielle Steele novels. In their defense, she would say, "They are not Harlequins."
She liked to drive her T-top Trans Am past construction sites. She liked blonds.
She slept with her back to the window, so if she was murdered in the night she would not see it coming.
She weighed 200 pounds when she graduated from Archbishop Wood High School.
On her first real date, with a guy named Michael Schiavo, her brother and his friend stood on the front lawn and cheered.
She met Michael her second semester at Bucks County Community College. He was a year older, a foot taller and blond. He was the first guy who ever noticed her.
She has her mother's bushy eyebrows.
At Christmas, she would sneak around the house trying to find where the presents were hidden. Her father set up a train around the tree.
They said grace before dinner and had roast beef on Sundays.
She wrote a letter to John Denver asking him to sing at her wedding. He never wrote back.
She was not a great cook. She made a banana cake with green bananas and laughed when everyone told her how horrible it was.
She clerked at Prudential Insurance in Pennsylvania and in Florida, but wanted a job with animals.
She always made someone else kill the roaches.
Michael proposed after five months of dating. Her parents thought they were too young.
She was married Nov. 10, 1984, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in front of about 250 guests. It was the wedding she had always wanted, except that she refused to wait for warmer weather so she could have a horse and carriage. The tuxedos were gray.
She collected Precious Moments figurines.
When her Christmas tree was crooked, she called her dad for help. He told her to go buy a tree straightener. She called all over looking for one.
Before college she lost more than 50 pounds on a NutriSystem diet.
When she was about 7, her brother Bobby threw a brick at her head and made her cry.
Bobby locked her in a suitcase once and couldn't get her out. He ran for their mom while the suitcase jumped up and down, screaming.
She drove 30 minutes out of her way five days a week to visit her grandmother in a nursing home.
Her friends teased her that at the beach she was always the one the sea gull pooped on. "Don't lie next to me," they would say.
She worked at a dry cleaner in high school.
The movie Jaws made her cry. She was terrified of the ocean for the rest of her life.
Her gerbils were always getting loose and winding up in the air conditioning unit in the basement.
She was born Dec. 3, 1963, the first child of Robert and Mary Schindler. Robert was a salesman, mostly. Mary stayed home with Terri, and then Bobby and Suzanne.
On Saturdays, she went to Mass with her mother.
She was not strong and would not work out.
She bought her brother Bobby his first Bruce Springsteen record, Darkness on the Edge of Town, in 1978. He's been a fanatic ever since.
She always wanted to be a veterinarian and wrote TV zookeeper Joan Embry for advice. Embry said to finish college.
An average student, she dropped out of junior college.
She saw doctors for a benign lump in her breast, a wart on her toe and dizzy spells.
As a child she would spend hours in her room arranging her stuffed animals.
She loved Wham!
When Bucky the Labrador collapsed, she performed mouth-to-nose resuscitation on him. He died in her arms.
She and Michael lived in her parents' basement in Pennsylvania, then in a condo her parents owned in Florida. They paid rent, $400 a month, when they could.
She saw An Officer and a Gentleman four times in one day.
She quit using birth control in 1989 but did not get pregnant.
She is allergic to Benadryl.
She had an intolerance to salad and dairy products.
The night before her wedding, her father sat on the floor of her bedroom and watched her sleep. He was crying. She knew he was there, but never told him.
She loved the TV show Starsky and Hutch so much that she and her friend Sue Pickwell wrote hundreds of letters to Paul Michael Glaser. He, or his people, eventually wrote back.
At 26, she was 5 feet 4 and weighed 110 pounds. When she took off her shirt at night, Michael could see her bones.
She dyed her hair blond and bought a bikini.
She went to clubs with her brother because Michael worked nights. When guys hit on her, she would giggle, grab her brother and say, "I'm here with my boyfriend."
She had neat handwriting.
She had a good tan.
When she rode on the back of Bobby's motorcycle, she held on so tight she left marks on his skin.
Early on Feb. 25, 1990, she collapsed on the floor in the hallway outside her bedroom, gasping.
- Information for this story came from interviews with Terri Schiavo's brother, Bob Schindler Jr., and her childhood friend Diane Meyer, and from court transcripts, Newsday and the Associated Press.
So, goals and how best to accomplish them?
* Get her out of there already!
* want her to survive this hellacious onslaught.
* want her in the care of her family.
* ________
Unfortunately you let her go. My parents were faced with the same situation when I insisted on leaving home with my high school boyfriend to live with him in another state. I left with my dad calling him a little boy and my mom in bed crying - I'm ashamed of it to this day.
Sometimes kids have to learn the hard way, which is what I did. After 4 years of his having no ambition and lame jobs, interspersed with unemployment, encompassed by total irresponsibility (while I worked full-time and supported us both), I finally got the nerve to throw him out. Thankfully he wasn't dangerous like Schiavo, just abysmally lazy.
Sounds like Terri's parents did everything they thought they could do as the parents of a legally independent daughter.
Someone in Terri's condition could certainly benefit from a wheelchair. The issue is, they are not a generic brand cheap wheelchair. My son just had his wheelchair updated with a new seating system and positioning support and the changes were almost $3000.00. It tilts and is his favorite place to be, plus it keeps his body in good alignment. The chair with supports when new was almost $6000. And it is NOT a power wheelchair.
If Terri has a wheelchair that is a decent one, although broken it would be much cheaper to just update it with proper seating and support and fix whatever is wrong with it.
But my gut feeling is as long as Michael is her legal charge it won't change a thing. If her parents think otherwise I would gladly contribute. Her parents are probably the best judge of what Terri needs and what will be useful for her under the current circumstances.
We could pledge support for her future needs when the parents get custody of her. Then anything we send her will benefit her directly.
I suspect the answer will be about her right to privacy and be killed. In other words no.
Pathetic cruel folks Terri is up against.
Worth a try, but I would get the Schindler's input first. And anything given needs to be in the Schindler's names till the legal guardianship is changed.
I wouldn't put anything past Felos, Michael & Co.
Let's ALL write to LARRY right now at
larry.king.live3@turner.com
and ask Larry to ASK the SCHINDLERS and PAT ANDERSON, their attorney, if Terri could benefit from a wheelchair? If she could handle being wheeled out into the sunshine. In fact, let's have Larry ask them WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME TERRI FELT THE SUNSHINE UPON HER FACE???!!!!!
May the 'others' out there hear, understand and respond.
I have wondered the same thing; do they have a voice; are they being asked to come forward. . .do they know they are needed. . .or have they moved to another planet. . .
I am joining you in agreement.
As to the wheelchair and being allowed to go outside, I think someone else nailed it on another thread. Felos and Schiavo cannot and will not allow anything for Terri that would indicate she is in fact a living, feeling human being. Their argument is that Terri is already dead, and they must treat her as though that's true, or it blows their argument. That's why they won't even let her teeth be brushed, etc.
The only hope that Terri can have any kind of life and stimulation around her is for her to be relieved of the "guardianship" of her jailer, MS.
May angels seen and unseen continue to guard, protect, and strengthen you.
* unseat Greer (the non-judge)
* Give Her Life!!!!!!
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