Terri Schiavo’s Parents to Speak at Annual Dinner

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Bob and Mary Schindler will be the featured speakers at the annuel fund-raising dinner for Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), based in Napa, on November 12, 2005.

I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity to meet the Schindlers and hear them tell the story of their battle to save their daughter’s life, as well as the horrifying manner in which she spent her last days on earth.

LLDF is the organization which provided significant, long-term funding for my case, Conservatorship of Wendland. Although I donated my legal services during the appellate phase, LLDF graciously continued providing funds for “hard costs” such as duplication and mailing of briefs, postage, etc. Had LLDF not provided that support, the Wendland case could not have been won. My clients will forever be grateful to LLDF for their dedication, loyalty, and steadfast support.

Bob and Mary Schindler have said that visiting their daughter in her final days was like entering a Nazi concentration camp.

Guards and barricades blocked the entrance to the grounds of the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo lay after her feeding tube was removed by court order.

Snipers lined the rooftop. The Schindlers had to show ID and go through airportlike security wands to get past police dogs and into the building.

Outside their daughter’s room, another guard examined their driver’s licenses, gave them pat-downs and made them leave their personal effects in the hall. Inside the room, a parched and skeletal Schiavo lay as a guard stood watch.

“It was to make sure we did not in any way feed Terri or give her any water,” Bob Schindler said Tuesday night at the Holiday Convention Centre in Omaha, Nebraska. “And this happened in this country.”

More than 600 people, including several nuns and clergy members, turned out to hear the Schindlers speak as part of the annual All Saints’ Day celebration for Pro Sanctity, a Catholic lay organization. The event served as a fundraiser for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation.

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Dressed in a gray suit and reading his notes through bifocals, Bob Schindler said he wanted to explain what the “secular media” got wrong. Mary Schindler stood nearby, giving him the occasional jab in the ribs to move things along.

Bob Schindler said an autopsy proved that his daughter was never bulimic — a condition that some doctors said led to Schiavo’s heart attack — and that 30 doctors filed sworn statements to a Florida court saying she wasn’t in a persistent vegetative state.

He said Michael Schiavo didn’t mention his wife’s end-of-life wishes during a malpractice trial but “remembered” them five years later, after lawyers won a sizable malpractice award on her behalf and he’d gotten a girlfriend. Bob Schindler said his daughter suffered. “She wasn’t out of her room for four years,” he said, “and she died there from dehydration and starvation.” And he alleged a conspiracy by euthanasia advocates and a “good old boy” justice system in Florida to end his daughter’s life.

“It was nothing short of judicial homicide,” he said.

But through the ordeal, he and Mary never lost their faith, he said. “We believe God chose Terri to awaken the world.”