She Was a Kind, Popular Girl With a Hearty Laugh

The brain-damaged woman whose personal tragedy led to a very public, emotional debate over a patient’s right to die remains a mystery to most Americans.

Who was Terri Schiavo -- what sort of life did she lead -- before her collapse at home in 1990?

According to family and longtime friends, Schiavo, 41, was a person who shunned the spotlight. A modest, intelligent woman, she cared more about catering to other people’s feelings, they said

“The important thing I recall about Terri is that she has always been so kind and considerate of other people,” said Mike Tammaro, her uncle, standing in front of the Florida hospice where Schiavo lived for the last five years before her death Thursday. “You couldn’t find a more gentle person ... someone really thoughtful. She never wanted to stand out in a crowd.”

Born on Dec. 3, 1963, Theresa Marie Schindler was the oldest of three children in a comfortable, middle-class household. Robert Schindler, her father, was a systems engineer and her mother, Mary, stayed home to take care of Terri and her brother, Robert Jr., and sister, Suzanne.

They lived in a large four-bedroom home in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., an affluent, tree-lined suburb north of Philadelphia. The Schindlers were devout Roman Catholics.

Friends and family described Terri as a bright, outgoing girl who was popular with other kids in the neighborhood.

She loved having sleepovers, recalled Diane Meyer, a close friend. Terri and Diane spent hours with each other, poring over teen magazines and pining after actor Richard Gere, Meyer remembered. The Schindlers’ home was known as a place where all the children’s friends were welcome, others said.

Terri had more than 100 stuffed animals of varying sizes arranged on the bed, shelves and chairs of her purple and white bedroom. She gave many of them names. But she also had a passion for live animals: When she was 10, Terri watched in horror as Bucky, her aging yellow Labrador, collapsed at home. She dropped to her knees and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a futile effort to keep him alive.

Her father has told the story about the night Terri was convinced the family’s car had run over a rabbit near their home. She was distraught for days. Although she never had much use for sports, Terri loved horseback riding and enjoyed outings with friends to stables in the nearby countryside.

Friends remember a fun-loving, brown-eyed girl who had a hearty laugh and a romantic streak. She was a big fan of John Denver, and once wrote to him, asking if he would sing a ballad at her wedding. She watched endless reruns of “Starsky & Hutch” because she adored Paul Michael Glaser; she had a soft spot for David Cassidy on “The Partridge Family” show; she watched the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman” multiple times. Terri read every Danielle Steel novel she could find.

“She was a good friend, and we’d laugh a lot, over silly things,” Sue Pickwell, a childhood friend, has said in TV and newspaper interviews. “But she held back in public; she never liked the limelight. She didn’t like attention paid to her.”

Terri loved to prepare food (banana cake was one of her favorites), but was the first to admit that she was not a talented chef. She loved to drive around the neighborhood with friends after they all got their licenses; she listened to hours of music on the car radio, and she especially enjoyed groups such as Wham!

It was a largely uncomplicated childhood, except for Terri’s persistent weight problem. She grew to 200 pounds at one point and vowed to take the weight off her 5-foot, 5-inch frame after graduating from Archbishop Wood Catholic High School.

“When you’re a teenager, people place a big emphasis on how you look, and Terri wasn’t very comfortable with people noticing her,” Pickwell said.

Using the NutriSystem plan, the girl with curly brown hair and glasses shed 50 pounds. She did it under the guidance of her pediatrician, and looked forward to losing even more weight.

Her mother was proud of her, recalling in an earlier newspaper interview that, before she got thinner, Terri would cry when it came time for her to buy clothes. She almost never went to school dances, rarely dated and didn’t attend her senior prom, Mary Schindler recalled.

As the weight came off, Terri began emerging from her shell. Boys started noticing her.

She looked forward to going to college. She wanted to learn more about taking care of animals and spoke about getting work in a zoo. Her mother said she dreamed of getting a job with the San Diego Zoo.

“But then,” Tammaro said, “everything changed.”

One morning, during her second semester at Bucks County Community College, the 18-year-old caught Michael Schiavo’s attention when both were taking a sociology class. At the time, Terri was still living at home.

Michael had grown up in nearby Levittown, the youngest of five boys.

“I fell for her the minute I saw her,” Schiavo recalled in a recent radio interview. “She had an aura about her, a presence, and I couldn’t stop looking at her face.”

Terri was overwhelmed by Michael’s interest -- he was the first man to pay real attention to her. They began spending many hours with each other, meeting each other’s families. Terri confided in Pickwell that the relationship was getting serious, that Michael wanted to marry her.

The couple became engaged and were married two years later, on Nov. 10, 1984. More than 250 guests attended the elaborate ceremony at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Southampton, Pa. For their wedding song, the couple chose “Tonight I Celebrate My Love (for You),” recorded by Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson.

Although Terri’s parents had voiced concerns that she was too young to marry, the 20-year-old bride was clearly in love, telling friends she was thrilled with her new life. She quickly fit into her role as one of five sisters-in-law in the Schiavo family; she loved the weekend barbecues and other rituals of her new in-laws.

“At first, I wondered how she would blend in with us, because we are a very outgoing, relaxed family,” said Karen Schiavo, wife of Michael’s brother Scott. “But Terri had this wonderful smile, and she never put on any airs. She was a person who loved being married, and she was happy with her life. The two families fit well, and we had a great deal of fun together. I miss those times with her.”

Terri and Michael didn’t have a lot of money or time to take vacations; she worked as an insurance clerk and he managed a restaurant. Six months after their marriage, in fact, they had to move into the basement of the Schindlers’ home for financial reasons. Still, there were good times.

“I remember we would all get together, the five brothers and their wives, on weekends and have great parties,” Karen Schiavo said. “Terri loved to dance. We’d dance to Bruce Springsteen, Sade, other music, and have a great time.”

That chapter of her life ended in 1988, when Terri and Michael moved to the St. Petersburg-Tampa area in Florida, following Terri’s parents, who had retired there. She and Michael got similar jobs, in an insurance office and a restaurant, and they tried to start a family. But Terri had problems getting pregnant.

“She wanted a houseful of kids. We both did,” Michael said in a recent radio interview. “We didn’t ask for a lot. We just wanted to have a happy, normal life. We didn’t want anything big.”

All the while, Terri continued to lose weight. When she dropped to 110 pounds, friends said, she looked great in a bikini, and she spent hours on the beach. But family members worried. “ ‘I eat, Mom, I eat,’ ” Mary Schindler remembered her daughter telling her.

Money continued to be tight for the couple; neither Terri nor Michael earned enough to rent anything larger than their small one-bedroom apartment in St. Petersburg. They had different working hours: Terri had a day job in the insurance office, Michael worked nights in a restaurant. She had a lot of free time, visiting local malls and clubs with friends.

Terri’s brother, Robert Jr., and other family members said they believed the couple were having marital problems and were on the verge of breaking up. But Scott Schiavo, Michael’s brother, said that “they were a couple who cared very much for each other. All this stuff you hear about them fighting all the time is wrong.”

A brunet, Terri had begun dying her hair blond soon after moving to Florida. It seemed to fit her new svelte image, and some of the last photographs taken of her show a smiling, relaxed young woman, someone who seemed to be comfortable with herself.

An officemate, Jackie Rhodes, remembered Terri as having a great sense of humor, someone who was loyal to her friends and a lot of fun to be with. On Feb. 24, 1990, Terri teased her friends, telling them she had an appointment at the beauty salon and didn’t know what color her hair would be this time. She spent $80 at the colorist.

At 5:30 the next morning, Terri collapsed in the hallway of her apartment.