Characters In Schiavo Case Live In Its Wake

Books by the people closest to Terri Schiavo are on shelves this week. At left is her husband's book, 'Terri: The Truth.' At right is her parents', 'A Life That Matters.'

JAY CONNER / Tribune

By DAVID SOMMER dsommer@tampatrib.com

Published: Mar 29, 2006

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

Within weeks of her death, the first of at least 11 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.

This week, books co-written by her parents and the husband they have come to revile make their debuts 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.

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 early July, 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 statement this year 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 last week 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 year 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.

Felos also has traveled the country speaking about end-of-life issues and is seeking a publisher for what will be his second book on the subject: "Beyond Schiavo - Searching for Death with Dignity."

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 last week. "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 last week.

Greer no longer has sheriff's detectives assigned to protect him 24 hours a day. But bodyguards were on hand recently 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."