Characters In Schiavo Case Live In Its Wake

The drumbeat of opposition to the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube has given way to the clatter of keyboards in the years since she died at a Pinellas Park hospice.

Within weeks of her death, the first of more than a dozen books went on sale chronicling the family feud over whether the brain-damaged woman would have wanted to be kept alive had she known what fate held for her.

Books co-written by her parents and the husband they have come to revile both made their debuts on March 27, 2006, to mark the first anniversary of Schiavo's death.

In the months leading up to the court-ordered removal of her feeding tube in March 2005, after Schiavo spent 15 years in what most doctors diagnosed as a persistent vegetative state, the case made worldwide headlines.

What once had been a private family dispute moved out of the courts and into the chambers of Congress and the Florida Legislature.

At one point, President Bush cut short a Texas vacation to fly back to Washington to sign legislation aimed at keeping Schiavo alive. Earlier in Rome, Pope John Paul II convened an international symposium and concluded that feeding tubes should not be considered as artificial life support for Catholics such as Schiavo.

Families Grow Closer, Bigger

The Schindler family always said their fight to keep Terri Schiavo alive brought them together, and that is true now more than ever.

All four surviving members of the family - Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler; her brother, Bobby Schindler; and her younger sister, Suzanne Vitadamo - now work for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation.

Bobby Schindler quit his job as a science and mathematics teacher at Tampa Catholic High School. Vitadamo gave up her career as a stock broker.

In a cramped, three-room office on Central Avenue, the Schindlers field e-mail and telephone calls from people anxious about end-of-life decisions being made for loved ones without their consent.

Everywhere, it seems, Terri Schiavo looks down on them from framed photographs, paintings and drawings made by supporters during the family's unsuccessful eight-year court battle to keep son-in-law Michael Schiavo from removing his wife's feeding tube.

Schiavo, meanwhile, initially sought privacy after his wife's feeding tube was removed for the last time, but he didn't stay out of headlines for long.

In June 2006, he surprised his estranged in-laws by burying their daughter's remains in a local cemetery, rather than a family plot outside Philadelphia where it would have been difficult for the Schindlers to visit.

At a waterside grave site beneath the oak trees at Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park, he had a gravestone engraved with an extra date the Schindlers say they believe is intended to gall them.

In addition to the dates of Terri Schiavo's birth and death, the stone includes the inscription "Departed This Earth, Feb. 25, 1990." That is the date she suffered unexplained heart failure that cut off oxygen to her brain.

Michael Schiavo contended his wife lost all cognition that day, and he stuck with the conviction throughout the years of court battle with the Schindlers over their desire to keep her alive. The Schindlers maintained their daughter continued to interact with them until her death.

In a TV interview, Schiavo said he did not intend to snub the Schindlers by including "I kept my promise" on the gravestone.

"It was from me to her. It had nothing to do with anybody else," Schiavo said. "She is up there praising me right now and saying, 'Thank you.'"

Also in the year after his wife's death, Schiavo was promoted at his job as a nurse at Pinellas County Jail.

In January 2006, Schiavo married his longtime fiancée and the mother of his two children in a religious ceremony at Espiritu Santo Catholic Church in Safety Harbor.

To qualify for a church wedding, Schiavo, a Lutheran, and Jodi Centonze, a divorced Catholic, had to get approval through what is known as a tribunal, diocesan spokeswoman Vicki Wells Bedard said.

"They could have done a private ceremony in front of a judge," Schiavo's brother, Brian Schiavo, said. "But they decided to have a nice wedding and invite all their friends."

"They are going on with their lives," he added. "He works a lot; he works very hard. They are trying to do the American Dream."

In Attention's Glare

The judge at the center of the case, who presided at a January 2000 trial over Schiavo's end-of-life wishes and ruled she would not want to be kept alive with a feeding tube, was forced to leave the Baptist congregation where he had worshipped for decades.

When Circuit Judge George Greer's ruling granting Michael Schiavo the right to remove his wife's feeding tube was carried out, hundreds of pro-life demonstrators gathered at Woodside Hospice for what turned out to be a 13-day vigil. The world watched with the help of dozens of satellite and microwave television news trucks.

After Terri Schiavo died March 31, attention turned to Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin.

Thogmartin performed an exhaustive autopsy and concluded Schiavo's cognitive brain functions ceased in 1990 when she suffered heart failure at age 26. However, Thogmartin was unable to resolve the question of what caused a seemingly healthy young woman's heart to malfunction.

Gov. Jeb Bush then kept the controversy going for a few more weeks by asking State Attorney Bernie McCabe to look into an alleged gap in time between when Michael Schiavo discovered his wife had collapsed and when he called 911.

In July of 2005, McCabe said he found nothing "indicative of criminal activity." The governor said he considered the state's involvement over.

Politicians Move On

By then, pollsters were reporting public backlash over the politicians' intervention in the case. Pundits attributed Schiavo with tipping a long slide in the president's public opinion ratings. Debates in Tallahassee and Washington abruptly ended. Other than U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez's 2006 statement that he now thinks it was wrong to get involved, the politicians mostly have been silent.

"I think we were very successful in raising the debate. I don't think we were successful in resolving it," state Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, said in March 2006 of the sudden end to what had been a fierce argument about proper removal of life support.

Baxley, who led the fight in the state House of Representatives to keep Schiavo alive, said he still wants the law changed to prevent the removal of life support when a family does not agree to it.

"There is still in our chamber this cloud of euthanasia," Baxley said. "At some time in the future we will address it."

Lawyers' Lives Go On

The two lawyers who did the lion's share of battle in Michael Schiavo's eight-year fight for court permission to remove his wife's feeding tube have spent the past few years getting their lives, and practices, back on track.

Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, said he spent a month in Hawaii scuba diving and partaking in what he termed "an extensive meditative retreat."

"There were a lot of facets of my life that were just on the back burner," Felos said.

Pat Anderson, who took up the fight of Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, in appellate courts after they lost at the 2000 trial, has not written a book but said she is considering writing a law review article with two other lawyers who fought to keep Schiavo alive.

Anderson, who had broken with a former law partner and was launching a solo practice in St. Petersburg when she took on the Schindlers' case, also has put her career and personal life back on track.

"I got my life back," she said. "I moved my office to the beach, Tom [her partner and husband] got sworn into the Bar, and we got the time finally to get married. ... I'm in a Florida frame of mind."

For the judge at the center of the battle, life never will be the same, he said in March 2006.

Greer no longer has sheriff's detectives assigned to protect him 24 hours a day. But bodyguards were on hand when he appeared at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club to receive the latest in a long series of awards.

The judge has been honored repeatedly in recent years by legal groups such as the Florida Conference of Circuit Judges, the American Board of Trial Lawyers and bar associations in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties. Typically, the awards applaud him for commitment to following the rule of law in the face of public criticism and hostility.

However, Greer said, the pride he once felt at being identified in public as a judge and former Pinellas County commissioner has turned into apprehension at the motives of those around him.

"My life is as back to as normal as it's ever going to get, I think," the judge said. "I look at things differently."