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Terri Schiavo's Parents and Husband. The Story. What is the 'moral'?
Behind Life-and-Death Fight, a Rift That Began Years Ago
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
New York Times
Published: March 26, 2005
T. PETERSBURG, Fla., March 25 - It is almost beyond belief, given the sea of distance between them now, that Terri Schiavo's husband and parents once shared a home, a life, a goal.
But for years - when Ms. Schiavo walked and talked among them and after her catastrophic collapse - the headstrong young man and his traditionalist in-laws were, by all accounts, friendly.
As the brain-damaged Ms. Schiavo lay dying in a hospice and her husband and parents continued to the end their battle over her fate, the rancor built and a transfixed nation wondered how a 12-year-old fight - even one that everyone agrees began over money - ever became so bad, culminating in daily court fights and decisions.
The hurled accusations persist: adulterer, opportunists, murderer, liars. Everyone on the street has taken sides, guessing at the motivations of Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers but never knowing for sure.
It is easy for most people to assume that blinding love for their daughter drives the parents, who have begged Mr. Schiavo to give them his wife and walk away. But his motives are harder to fathom. Is it stubbornness that drives him, or fervor to commit fully to the other woman in his life, a girlfriend of eight years with whom he has two children? Does he want Ms. Schiavo to die because she is a burden, or because, as he says time and again, he promised her not to keep her alive by artificial means?
The truth may always be out of reach. But the history of Mr. Schiavo and the Schindlers, gleaned from court papers, interviews and their statements over the years, offers at least some insight into a war of clashing values, personalities and hopes.
Theirs is a battle over power, money and a woman they all claimed to love more than anything, born of perceived betrayal that grew more painful with each attack.
Even now, their visits to her deathbed are carefully orchestrated so as not to coincide, and they cannot agree on what to do with her remains after she dies.
"It's not a family issue anymore," Ms. Schiavo's younger brother, Bobby Schindler, said, adding that it had been years since the Schindlers considered Mr. Schiavo anything but a legal opponent. "All we've ever asked is that he give Terri back to us."
To Mr. Schiavo and his family, it has all been highly personal.
"We are not mean people," his brother Scott said in an interview on Friday. "But when you start throwing stones like that, and have absolutely no respect for anybody else, it's hard to even go there."
They met in the Philadelphia suburbs, where Ms. Schiavo and Michael Schiavo spent their childhoods and married in 1984, barely past adolescence. The couple relied on the generosity of her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, first living in their basement in Pennsylvania, then moving to a condominium here that Mr. Schindler bought when he sold his heavy equipment business.
The Schindlers followed the couple to this sunny coastal city, and though they did not see Mr. Schiavo often - he was working long hours at beachside restaurants - they had no problem with him. He called them Mom and Dad. They paid their daughter and son in-law's rent.
The couple wanted to have a baby, according to court papers, but failed to conceive, even after consulting a fertility doctor. By then, Ms. Schiavo, who is 5 foot 3 and had weighed more than 200 pounds in high school, weighed 110. Her brother and sister now say that she was starting to feel unhappy in her marriage. In an interview, Bobby Schindler said Ms. Schiavo had confided in him at a restaurant one night.
"She brought me over to the bathroom and broke down in tears," he said. "She said her marriage was falling apart, but she didn't have the guts to divorce him. I was shocked."
In recent years, the Schindlers have also described Mr. Schiavo as a controlling husband who would keep track of the mileage on his wife's car, lash out at her for spending money and hound her to stay thin. They have said that the couple fought in the months before Ms. Schiavo's collapse and that Mr. Schiavo was, perhaps, harming his wife.
(Page 2 of 3)Mr. Schiavo's brother Brian said he found that unfeasible. "Mike was three times her size," Brian Schiavo, who lives in Sarasota, said in an interview in 2003. "If he was abusing her, there would be some sign of something. She would have taken her two cats and gone to her parents'."Whatever the relationships were, they changed profoundly in February 1990, when Mr. Schiavo says he awoke to a thud in the dead of night and found his wife passed out on the floor. Together, the Schindlers and Mr. Schiavo learned that Ms. Schiavo's heart had stopped and that she had suffered drastic brain damage before the paramedics arrived. Doctors say a potassium deficiency, possibly caused by an eating disorder, led to her collapse.
The parents and son-in-law promised to see Ms. Schiavo, just 26, recover. The Schiavos and Schindlers moved in, sharing a house in St. Petersburg Beach as they devoted themselves to Ms. Schiavo's care.
In June 1990, Mr. Schiavo was appointed his wife's guardian, and months later, he took her to California for an experimental, ultimately unsuccessful, treatment to stimulate her brain. Ms. Schiavo was later placed in a nursing home in Largo, Fla., where Mr. Schiavo was strict with and sometimes hostile toward the staff, court transcripts show."His demanding concern for her well-being and meticulous care by the nursing home earned him the characterization by the administrator as 'a nursing home administrator's nightmare,' " wrote Jay Wolfson, a court-appointed independent guardian for Ms. Schiavo who had no say in her case but researched it in 2003. Mr. Schiavo even went to nursing school with the goal, his brothers say, of better caring for his wife. He filed a malpractice suit against the obstetrician who had overseen Ms. Schiavo's fertility therapy, contending that the potassium deficiency should have been detected.
In January 1993, the couple was awarded $750,000 in economic damages for her and $300,000 for loss of companionship for him.A month later, on St. Valentine's Day, both sides say, a fight over the award signaled the beginning of their estrangement.
The way Mr. Schiavo has described it, he was visiting his wife when the Schindlers walked in and Mr. Schindler asked how much money he would receive from Mr. Schiavo's part of the malpractice settlement.The Schindlers say the fight was about what the treatment their daughter's money would go toward, with their advocating rigorous therapy and Mr. Schiavo wanting basic care.The rift quickly deepened.
Mr. Schiavo blocked his in-laws' access to his wife's medical records. In July 1993, the Schindlers briefly tried to remove Mr. Schiavo as her guardian. Scott Schiavo said his brother was deeply offended by what he saw as a crass effort by Mr. Schindler to claim some of the settlement money.
As the fight played out, Mr. Schiavo's hopes for recovery apparently evaporated. In 1994, court records show, he decided not to have Ms. Schiavo treated for a urinary tract infection, a move prompted, he later testified, by her doctor's advice. "I think he finally saw the reality of it," Brian Schiavo said. Ultimately, Ms. Schiavo's nursing home challenged the order, and he canceled it, along with a "do not resuscitate" order he imposed, Mr. Wolfson said. But there was no reversing the ill will.
Only after his mother's death in 1997 did Mr. Schiavo tell his in-laws that on several occasions his wife had said she would not want to be kept alive artificially. The timing of the disclosure- after he had won the malpractice money and begun dating Jodi Centonze, with whom he would have two children - made the Schindlers deeply suspicious, they say. They continue to insist that their daughter, who they say tried to administer CPR to the family dog when it was dying, would never choose to have her life cut short."My sister and I were very close, and we never talked about this stuff," Bobby Schindler said. "I mean, who would at 20 years old, 25?"
In 1998, when Mr. Schiavo asked a court's permission to remove his wife's feeding tube, the Schindlers challenged, leading to a trial. That is when Michael and Scott Schiavo and their sister in-law Joan Schiavo testified that Ms. Schiavo had told them never to prolong her life artificially. Scott Schiavo testified that after his grandmother was on life support at the end of her life, Ms. Schiavo had told him: "If I ever go like that, just let me go. Don't leave me there."
(Page 3 of 3)Judge George Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court found the testimony constituted "clear and convincing" evidence of Ms. Schiavo's wishes, and her feeding tube was removed in April 2001. It was reconnected days later, after a former girlfriend of Mr. Schiavo called a radio station to say he had told her he had no idea whether his wife would have wanted life-prolonging measures.
That led to new testimony, but it did not change Judge Greer's mind, partly because the girlfriend recanted.The Schindlers stepped up their publicity campaign that year, videotaping their daughter and distributing the tapes to television stations. That infuriated Mr. Schiavo, Scott Schiavo said, because his self-conscious wife would have been mortified. "She was very, very particular about the way she looked, very proud when she walked out the door," Scott Schiavo said on Friday. "She would be so upset to have the world seeing her that way, and Michael knew that."Mr. Schiavo's anger intensified as the Schindlers went increasingly public, winning support from religious groups, news media outlets and, ultimately, Gov. Jeb Bush.
At one point, Mr. Schiavo banned the Schindlers from seeing his wife, saying aides at her hospice had found what appeared to be needle marks on her arm after one of their visits. A police report found no evidence of wrongdoing, and their visiting rights resumed three months later. Mr. Schiavo's demeanor, prickly and forceful, did not gain him much sympathy.
[...]
By contrast, the Schindlers - he affable and jokey, she quiet and melancholic - worked hard to win hearts and minds. Scott Schiavo said he felt sorry for Mrs. Schindler, who he said was always close to her daughter, but not for Mr. Schindler, who he said thrived on the attention. If it were not for the father, he added, "this could have been resolved a long time ago.""Terri would still have whatever dignity she had left," Mr. Schiavo said, "and everything would be peaceful."
Instead, Mr. Schiavo has even rejected the Schindlers' request that their daughter be buried in Florida instead of cremated, which they object to as Catholics. He also refused their request to let Ms. Schiavo die in their home instead of at the hospice. Mr. Schiavo's lawyer told reporters this week that the cremated remains would be buried at the Schiavo family plot outside Philadelphia, far from the parents who fought so intensely to win her back.
Whether they can or will visit her gravesite could be the next subject of dispute.
Lynn Waddell and Dennis Blank contributed reporting from Pinellas County, Fla., for this article.
Behind Life-and-Death Fight, a Rift That Began Years Ago
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
New York Times
Published: March 26, 2005
T. PETERSBURG, Fla., March 25 - It is almost beyond belief, given the sea of distance between them now, that Terri Schiavo's husband and parents once shared a home, a life, a goal.
But for years - when Ms. Schiavo walked and talked among them and after her catastrophic collapse - the headstrong young man and his traditionalist in-laws were, by all accounts, friendly.
As the brain-damaged Ms. Schiavo lay dying in a hospice and her husband and parents continued to the end their battle over her fate, the rancor built and a transfixed nation wondered how a 12-year-old fight - even one that everyone agrees began over money - ever became so bad, culminating in daily court fights and decisions.
The hurled accusations persist: adulterer, opportunists, murderer, liars. Everyone on the street has taken sides, guessing at the motivations of Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers but never knowing for sure.
It is easy for most people to assume that blinding love for their daughter drives the parents, who have begged Mr. Schiavo to give them his wife and walk away. But his motives are harder to fathom. Is it stubbornness that drives him, or fervor to commit fully to the other woman in his life, a girlfriend of eight years with whom he has two children? Does he want Ms. Schiavo to die because she is a burden, or because, as he says time and again, he promised her not to keep her alive by artificial means?
The truth may always be out of reach. But the history of Mr. Schiavo and the Schindlers, gleaned from court papers, interviews and their statements over the years, offers at least some insight into a war of clashing values, personalities and hopes.
Theirs is a battle over power, money and a woman they all claimed to love more than anything, born of perceived betrayal that grew more painful with each attack.
Even now, their visits to her deathbed are carefully orchestrated so as not to coincide, and they cannot agree on what to do with her remains after she dies.
"It's not a family issue anymore," Ms. Schiavo's younger brother, Bobby Schindler, said, adding that it had been years since the Schindlers considered Mr. Schiavo anything but a legal opponent. "All we've ever asked is that he give Terri back to us."
To Mr. Schiavo and his family, it has all been highly personal.
"We are not mean people," his brother Scott said in an interview on Friday. "But when you start throwing stones like that, and have absolutely no respect for anybody else, it's hard to even go there."
They met in the Philadelphia suburbs, where Ms. Schiavo and Michael Schiavo spent their childhoods and married in 1984, barely past adolescence. The couple relied on the generosity of her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, first living in their basement in Pennsylvania, then moving to a condominium here that Mr. Schindler bought when he sold his heavy equipment business.
The Schindlers followed the couple to this sunny coastal city, and though they did not see Mr. Schiavo often - he was working long hours at beachside restaurants - they had no problem with him. He called them Mom and Dad. They paid their daughter and son in-law's rent.
The couple wanted to have a baby, according to court papers, but failed to conceive, even after consulting a fertility doctor. By then, Ms. Schiavo, who is 5 foot 3 and had weighed more than 200 pounds in high school, weighed 110. Her brother and sister now say that she was starting to feel unhappy in her marriage. In an interview, Bobby Schindler said Ms. Schiavo had confided in him at a restaurant one night.
"She brought me over to the bathroom and broke down in tears," he said. "She said her marriage was falling apart, but she didn't have the guts to divorce him. I was shocked."
In recent years, the Schindlers have also described Mr. Schiavo as a controlling husband who would keep track of the mileage on his wife's car, lash out at her for spending money and hound her to stay thin. They have said that the couple fought in the months before Ms. Schiavo's collapse and that Mr. Schiavo was, perhaps, harming his wife.
(Page 2 of 3)Mr. Schiavo's brother Brian said he found that unfeasible. "Mike was three times her size," Brian Schiavo, who lives in Sarasota, said in an interview in 2003. "If he was abusing her, there would be some sign of something. She would have taken her two cats and gone to her parents'."Whatever the relationships were, they changed profoundly in February 1990, when Mr. Schiavo says he awoke to a thud in the dead of night and found his wife passed out on the floor. Together, the Schindlers and Mr. Schiavo learned that Ms. Schiavo's heart had stopped and that she had suffered drastic brain damage before the paramedics arrived. Doctors say a potassium deficiency, possibly caused by an eating disorder, led to her collapse.
The parents and son-in-law promised to see Ms. Schiavo, just 26, recover. The Schiavos and Schindlers moved in, sharing a house in St. Petersburg Beach as they devoted themselves to Ms. Schiavo's care.
In June 1990, Mr. Schiavo was appointed his wife's guardian, and months later, he took her to California for an experimental, ultimately unsuccessful, treatment to stimulate her brain. Ms. Schiavo was later placed in a nursing home in Largo, Fla., where Mr. Schiavo was strict with and sometimes hostile toward the staff, court transcripts show."His demanding concern for her well-being and meticulous care by the nursing home earned him the characterization by the administrator as 'a nursing home administrator's nightmare,' " wrote Jay Wolfson, a court-appointed independent guardian for Ms. Schiavo who had no say in her case but researched it in 2003. Mr. Schiavo even went to nursing school with the goal, his brothers say, of better caring for his wife. He filed a malpractice suit against the obstetrician who had overseen Ms. Schiavo's fertility therapy, contending that the potassium deficiency should have been detected.
In January 1993, the couple was awarded $750,000 in economic damages for her and $300,000 for loss of companionship for him.A month later, on St. Valentine's Day, both sides say, a fight over the award signaled the beginning of their estrangement.
The way Mr. Schiavo has described it, he was visiting his wife when the Schindlers walked in and Mr. Schindler asked how much money he would receive from Mr. Schiavo's part of the malpractice settlement.The Schindlers say the fight was about what the treatment their daughter's money would go toward, with their advocating rigorous therapy and Mr. Schiavo wanting basic care.The rift quickly deepened.
Mr. Schiavo blocked his in-laws' access to his wife's medical records. In July 1993, the Schindlers briefly tried to remove Mr. Schiavo as her guardian. Scott Schiavo said his brother was deeply offended by what he saw as a crass effort by Mr. Schindler to claim some of the settlement money.
As the fight played out, Mr. Schiavo's hopes for recovery apparently evaporated. In 1994, court records show, he decided not to have Ms. Schiavo treated for a urinary tract infection, a move prompted, he later testified, by her doctor's advice. "I think he finally saw the reality of it," Brian Schiavo said. Ultimately, Ms. Schiavo's nursing home challenged the order, and he canceled it, along with a "do not resuscitate" order he imposed, Mr. Wolfson said. But there was no reversing the ill will.
Only after his mother's death in 1997 did Mr. Schiavo tell his in-laws that on several occasions his wife had said she would not want to be kept alive artificially. The timing of the disclosure- after he had won the malpractice money and begun dating Jodi Centonze, with whom he would have two children - made the Schindlers deeply suspicious, they say. They continue to insist that their daughter, who they say tried to administer CPR to the family dog when it was dying, would never choose to have her life cut short."My sister and I were very close, and we never talked about this stuff," Bobby Schindler said. "I mean, who would at 20 years old, 25?"
In 1998, when Mr. Schiavo asked a court's permission to remove his wife's feeding tube, the Schindlers challenged, leading to a trial. That is when Michael and Scott Schiavo and their sister in-law Joan Schiavo testified that Ms. Schiavo had told them never to prolong her life artificially. Scott Schiavo testified that after his grandmother was on life support at the end of her life, Ms. Schiavo had told him: "If I ever go like that, just let me go. Don't leave me there."
(Page 3 of 3)Judge George Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court found the testimony constituted "clear and convincing" evidence of Ms. Schiavo's wishes, and her feeding tube was removed in April 2001. It was reconnected days later, after a former girlfriend of Mr. Schiavo called a radio station to say he had told her he had no idea whether his wife would have wanted life-prolonging measures.
That led to new testimony, but it did not change Judge Greer's mind, partly because the girlfriend recanted.The Schindlers stepped up their publicity campaign that year, videotaping their daughter and distributing the tapes to television stations. That infuriated Mr. Schiavo, Scott Schiavo said, because his self-conscious wife would have been mortified. "She was very, very particular about the way she looked, very proud when she walked out the door," Scott Schiavo said on Friday. "She would be so upset to have the world seeing her that way, and Michael knew that."Mr. Schiavo's anger intensified as the Schindlers went increasingly public, winning support from religious groups, news media outlets and, ultimately, Gov. Jeb Bush.
At one point, Mr. Schiavo banned the Schindlers from seeing his wife, saying aides at her hospice had found what appeared to be needle marks on her arm after one of their visits. A police report found no evidence of wrongdoing, and their visiting rights resumed three months later. Mr. Schiavo's demeanor, prickly and forceful, did not gain him much sympathy.
[...]
By contrast, the Schindlers - he affable and jokey, she quiet and melancholic - worked hard to win hearts and minds. Scott Schiavo said he felt sorry for Mrs. Schindler, who he said was always close to her daughter, but not for Mr. Schindler, who he said thrived on the attention. If it were not for the father, he added, "this could have been resolved a long time ago.""Terri would still have whatever dignity she had left," Mr. Schiavo said, "and everything would be peaceful."
Instead, Mr. Schiavo has even rejected the Schindlers' request that their daughter be buried in Florida instead of cremated, which they object to as Catholics. He also refused their request to let Ms. Schiavo die in their home instead of at the hospice. Mr. Schiavo's lawyer told reporters this week that the cremated remains would be buried at the Schiavo family plot outside Philadelphia, far from the parents who fought so intensely to win her back.
Whether they can or will visit her gravesite could be the next subject of dispute.
Lynn Waddell and Dennis Blank contributed reporting from Pinellas County, Fla., for this article.
