Friends Remember Schiavo Before Maelstrom
Friends Remember Late Terri Schiavo Before She Became a National Obsession
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
The Associated Press
Mar. 31, 2005 - President Bush spoke for "millions of Americans ... saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo," but only a few of them knew her as a woman not a cause or a political battleground, not a heartbreaking figure whose every facial tic was scrutinized for evidence of a conscious mind within.
The Terri Schiavo her friends and family remember had a marvelous laugh. She loved animals. She hungered for romance, and found herself swept up in a grand love affair.
And then, 15 years ago, it all stopped suddenly, tragically.
She was 26, thrust into a strange and terribly public fate for one who was so shy and quiet.
Her high school yearbook, from Archbishop Wood in Philadelphia's suburbs, lists only one activity library aide. The Rev. Chris Walsh, the school minister, said while several teachers remain from those days, only one remembers Terri, and not much about her.
Benjamin Shatz lived next door to her family's home in Huntingdon Valley. All he remembers is "a nice child, respectful, polite."
Her shyness may have had something to do with her weight. Just 5-foot-3, she weighed 200 pounds in high school. "She cried a lot when she went to get clothes," said her mother, Mary.
But her friend Diane Meyer remembers laughter, instead. "Among those who knew her, she was always vivacious. She had a laugh that made everyone laugh," she said.
Meyer's first memory of Terri Schindler was her own third-birthday party, at the Philadelphia Zoo. She remembers Terri as a chubby child with big brown eyes behind Coke-bottle glasses.
As the birthday girl, Diane was given a key to storybooks posted around the zoo. Turn the key, and a recorded voice would talk about the animals. Other children at the party wanted a key, too, and were jealous.
But not Terri. "She was just so excited," Meyer said.
She was thrilled to be among the animals. She adored dogs, and as she grew older she loved to ride horses. She wanted to be a veterinarian, but she was an uninspired student and never graduated from college.
Once, she came home crying at night, sure that she had run over a rabbit or squirrel. Her family calmed her down and convinced her no animal had died, but then her brother Bobby retrieved the dead bunny and threw it in the bushes, so she would never know.
Another time, the family's Labrador retriever Bucky collapsed, and Terri tried to give him mouth-to-muzzle resuscitation. He died as she held him.
The Schindlers lived in a four-bedroom colonial on Red Wing Lane. Terri's bedroom was purple and white; she would spend hours there, arranging her more than 100 stuffed animals, a faux menagerie. She also collected Precious Moments figurines, most of them gifts from her parents.
The Schindlers Mary and Robert (owner of an industrial equipment company) and their children, Theresa Marie, Bobby and Suzanne were a tight-knit family. Terri joined her mother for Mass on Saturdays, and all would gather round the table for roast beef on Sunday.
She was especially close to her mother. "When people say I was her best friend, I say no," said Meyer. "I was her closest friend. Her mother was her best friend."
Then Michael came along.
Meyer remembers the moment more than 20 years ago when an excited Terri called her at college. She had a date -- the first date this once overweight girl had ever had. Please, Terri begged, you have to come home and help me get ready.
Meyer could not make it home in time, but she was there the next day, to rehash Terri's spectacular night of romance. The boy, tall and handsome, was someone she met in sociology class at Bucks County Community College.
He kissed her, and her life was never the same.
She had never been kissed before. She had never been on a real date before. She had not gone to her senior prom, this girl who enjoyed Danielle Steel romances and devoured Tiger Beat magazine with friends, giggling over who was cutest Starsky or Hutch.
Michael and Terri were married a little more than a year after that first date, on Nov. 10, 1984, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church. She wore Victorian white with a pink-and-white bouquet; it was a fairy-tale ceremony, even if John Denver did not reply to her letters beseeching him to perform at her wedding.
At first, the couple lived in the Schindlers' basement. In 1986, they moved into a condominium her parents owned in Florida, paying $400-a-month rent; the rest of the Schindlers also moved to the Sunshine State.
After high school, Terri lost more than 50 pounds by dieting. Now she dyed her hair blonde, wore a bikini. She liked to tan.
"Terri has always been beautiful from the inside out," Meyer said. "And then when she lost all the weight, she really became quite beautiful on the outside as well. What was inside she allowed to shine out at that point."
In Florida, Michael was hired as a restaurant manager, and Terri was an office worker for Prudential insurance. "Everybody liked her. She was hardworking," said Jackie Rhodes, a co-worker and pal who shopped and hung out at Bennigan's with her.
When a colleague ran a golf benefit for Angelus House, a home for the handicapped, Terri and Jackie volunteered. Rhodes joined Terri in her frequent visits to see her grandmother at a nursing home 30 miles away.
Rhodes said Terri wanted to have children and had stopped using birth control, but had not become pregnant. She had seen a doctor about it.
Michael's family says the couple seemed happy together, but Terri's friends and family disagree they say she was considering leaving a control freak who tried to keep her away from her loved ones, who had told her that if she ever got fat again, he would divorce her.
By this time, she weighed less than 120 pounds, and her ribs were visible.
"I eat, Mom. I eat," she told her concerned mother.
Her family doubts she had a real eating disorder. Doctors, though, think anorexia or something like it led to a potassium imbalance that caused her collapse in the hallway outside of her bedroom on Feb. 25, 1990.
Her heart stopped for 10 minutes. Her life changed forever.
Friends Remember Late Terri Schiavo Before She Became a National Obsession
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
The Associated Press
Mar. 31, 2005 - President Bush spoke for "millions of Americans ... saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo," but only a few of them knew her as a woman not a cause or a political battleground, not a heartbreaking figure whose every facial tic was scrutinized for evidence of a conscious mind within.
The Terri Schiavo her friends and family remember had a marvelous laugh. She loved animals. She hungered for romance, and found herself swept up in a grand love affair.
And then, 15 years ago, it all stopped suddenly, tragically.
She was 26, thrust into a strange and terribly public fate for one who was so shy and quiet.
Her high school yearbook, from Archbishop Wood in Philadelphia's suburbs, lists only one activity library aide. The Rev. Chris Walsh, the school minister, said while several teachers remain from those days, only one remembers Terri, and not much about her.
Benjamin Shatz lived next door to her family's home in Huntingdon Valley. All he remembers is "a nice child, respectful, polite."
Her shyness may have had something to do with her weight. Just 5-foot-3, she weighed 200 pounds in high school. "She cried a lot when she went to get clothes," said her mother, Mary.
But her friend Diane Meyer remembers laughter, instead. "Among those who knew her, she was always vivacious. She had a laugh that made everyone laugh," she said.
Meyer's first memory of Terri Schindler was her own third-birthday party, at the Philadelphia Zoo. She remembers Terri as a chubby child with big brown eyes behind Coke-bottle glasses.
As the birthday girl, Diane was given a key to storybooks posted around the zoo. Turn the key, and a recorded voice would talk about the animals. Other children at the party wanted a key, too, and were jealous.
But not Terri. "She was just so excited," Meyer said.
She was thrilled to be among the animals. She adored dogs, and as she grew older she loved to ride horses. She wanted to be a veterinarian, but she was an uninspired student and never graduated from college.
Once, she came home crying at night, sure that she had run over a rabbit or squirrel. Her family calmed her down and convinced her no animal had died, but then her brother Bobby retrieved the dead bunny and threw it in the bushes, so she would never know.
Another time, the family's Labrador retriever Bucky collapsed, and Terri tried to give him mouth-to-muzzle resuscitation. He died as she held him.
The Schindlers lived in a four-bedroom colonial on Red Wing Lane. Terri's bedroom was purple and white; she would spend hours there, arranging her more than 100 stuffed animals, a faux menagerie. She also collected Precious Moments figurines, most of them gifts from her parents.
The Schindlers Mary and Robert (owner of an industrial equipment company) and their children, Theresa Marie, Bobby and Suzanne were a tight-knit family. Terri joined her mother for Mass on Saturdays, and all would gather round the table for roast beef on Sunday.
She was especially close to her mother. "When people say I was her best friend, I say no," said Meyer. "I was her closest friend. Her mother was her best friend."
Then Michael came along.
Meyer remembers the moment more than 20 years ago when an excited Terri called her at college. She had a date -- the first date this once overweight girl had ever had. Please, Terri begged, you have to come home and help me get ready.
Meyer could not make it home in time, but she was there the next day, to rehash Terri's spectacular night of romance. The boy, tall and handsome, was someone she met in sociology class at Bucks County Community College.
He kissed her, and her life was never the same.
She had never been kissed before. She had never been on a real date before. She had not gone to her senior prom, this girl who enjoyed Danielle Steel romances and devoured Tiger Beat magazine with friends, giggling over who was cutest Starsky or Hutch.
Michael and Terri were married a little more than a year after that first date, on Nov. 10, 1984, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church. She wore Victorian white with a pink-and-white bouquet; it was a fairy-tale ceremony, even if John Denver did not reply to her letters beseeching him to perform at her wedding.
At first, the couple lived in the Schindlers' basement. In 1986, they moved into a condominium her parents owned in Florida, paying $400-a-month rent; the rest of the Schindlers also moved to the Sunshine State.
After high school, Terri lost more than 50 pounds by dieting. Now she dyed her hair blonde, wore a bikini. She liked to tan.
"Terri has always been beautiful from the inside out," Meyer said. "And then when she lost all the weight, she really became quite beautiful on the outside as well. What was inside she allowed to shine out at that point."
In Florida, Michael was hired as a restaurant manager, and Terri was an office worker for Prudential insurance. "Everybody liked her. She was hardworking," said Jackie Rhodes, a co-worker and pal who shopped and hung out at Bennigan's with her.
When a colleague ran a golf benefit for Angelus House, a home for the handicapped, Terri and Jackie volunteered. Rhodes joined Terri in her frequent visits to see her grandmother at a nursing home 30 miles away.
Rhodes said Terri wanted to have children and had stopped using birth control, but had not become pregnant. She had seen a doctor about it.
Michael's family says the couple seemed happy together, but Terri's friends and family disagree they say she was considering leaving a control freak who tried to keep her away from her loved ones, who had told her that if she ever got fat again, he would divorce her.
By this time, she weighed less than 120 pounds, and her ribs were visible.
"I eat, Mom. I eat," she told her concerned mother.
Her family doubts she had a real eating disorder. Doctors, though, think anorexia or something like it led to a potassium imbalance that caused her collapse in the hallway outside of her bedroom on Feb. 25, 1990.
Her heart stopped for 10 minutes. Her life changed forever.
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