This gritty strip of central Florida is used to living in obscurity, but its residents have become inundated by a national story that is everywhere – even in the air overhead. This time of year, people expect rowdy kids on spring break, snowbirds in slow-moving cars, tourists lost on their way to the Gulf – not protesters, media and a sad family story that has parked itself in their ZIP code.
There are deep wells of sympathy here for the 41-year-old Florida woman’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, who have fought the removal of her feeding tube. But there is also exhaustion with a story that has been with this community for more than a decade.
Around town, residents are taking alternate routes to the Winn-Dixie, which is near the hospice where the severely brain-damaged Schiavo is dying and whose parking lot fills with out-of-state cars bringing people here for the vigils. While they pump gas, they wait behind vans with anti-abortion stickers and pictures of aborted fetuses on the sides. Anyone heading to the Bank of America hears protesters telling them to honk if they want to rescue Schiavo.
There is a macabre deathwatch on local television. But then, it’s on the national news, too.
“It has gotten crazy now,” said Debbie Cooper, 47, a Pinellas Park native. “My neighbors had a sign up about ‘Saving Terri’ and it’s just about all anybody is talking about at work.”
People around Pinellas Park appear to be a lot like those in national polls: They strongly support husband Michael Schiavo, who has said his wife would not want to be kept alive with artificial measures, and who succeeded 10 days ago in having her feeding tube removed. The parents of Schiavo, who has been in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state for the past 15 years, believe their daughter can express emotion and thought, and have been battling with their son-in-law to wrest custody from him.
At Pepper’s restaurant on a busy strip near the hospice, Cooper sat with her husband, smoking a cigarette and saying that she would want him to end her life if she were kept alive artificially. He threw a tattooed arm around her, and they both agreed this story never should have left the confines of the family. Now that it has, they want it to end.
“Just let her die in peace,” Cooper said. “Just let her go.”
Outside the hospice yesterday, several people in wheelchairs with signs reading “Not Dead Yet” lay down before the facility in protest. The Schindler family disputed yesterday their attorney’s assessment that Schiavo had “passed the point of no return.”
The Rev. Thaddeus Malanowski announced he had given Schiavo communion after her husband, who a day earlier had denied a request from his wife’s parents that she be given the sacrament, granted permission. The priest said he gave Schiavo a drop of wine on her tongue.
The priest’s announcement drew applause and cheers from the crowd, which spent most of the day heckling police and protesting loudly.
Miami lawyer Larry Klayman, former chairman of Judicial Watch who along with former presidential candidate Alan Keyes has been lobbying for the Schindlers, also appeared at the hospice, asking Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to “pardon” Schiavo. The governor says he will not overstep his powers to intervene.
Pinellas Park is a city of more than 46,000, an intersection of busy streets dotted by mobile homes and fast-food restaurants. Residents here remember bungalows, not trailer parks, and local attractions such as the Honky Chateau, where teenagers used to dance. They can remember when the thoroughfare named for a dairy farm looked like someplace you could find a cow, instead of a busy strip with long waits for a left turn.
These days, the city consists of religious conservatives, liberal retirees and people who tell you to mind your own business when you ask about their politics. Voting records suggest Pinellas Park is almost perfectly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Though the area solidly backed Jeb Bush in his 2002 re-election, the city went for George W. Bush by less than 1 percentage point in last year’s presidential race.
Many here believe Congress and President Bush never should have interceded by allowing the Schiavo case to be heard by federal judges. And some are critical of the governor’s crusade for the reinsertion of the feeding tube, arguing that he went too far in a case that had been settled by state courts.
“I think the president and Congress did too much,” said Cynthia Owen, 42, a local Republican wearing a Promise Keepers cap and a cross around her neck. “And this changed my opinion about Jeb Bush, too. It’s making me take another look at him – I don’t think he ever should have gotten so involved in this.”
Still, there are plenty of residents who are eager for Pinellas Park to be known as the place that battled to prolong the life of Terri Schiavo. At Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church yesterday, members of the congregation passed out fliers the color of yellow Easter eggs and urged their neighbors to attend a rally for Schiavo. The dying woman’s name appeared in the church bulletin in a list of the sick in need of prayers.
Jennifer Bargerstock blinked back tears as she left the Easter service. “I’m heartbroken about it,” the 25-year-old mother said, adding that Schiavo has been in her thoughts daily. “It’s very linked to pro-life. It’s just like abortion. Why take away life when life is already there?”
But nearby, Verne Wright, 52, couldn’t share that sentiment. A staunch opponent of abortion whose wife counsels pregnant teens for their church with Bible study, he nevertheless objected to the way anti-abortion activists have attached their cause to the Schiavo case as he left a local Baptist church yesterday.
“They’re definitely trying to make it sound like a pro-life issue, but it’s a privacy issue, too,” he said. “I feel bad for the family, but we’d like to see it be over, to get the focus off the unseemly side of everything.”
Some residents say they’re so used to the Schiavo story, they’re almost inured to it. They’re surprised when out-of-town relatives call knowing more about the case than they do. One resident was shocked when, on vacation in Rome last week, the first thing she saw on TV was the Schiavo case.
Still, this story has never been dormant. It is trapped in the humid air of this peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico and Tampa Bay. At the Mustang Flea Market, where tourists browse for palm frond clocks and fish-pattern T-shirts, the nearby hospice casts a shadow. A merchant wears an angel pin and talks mournfully about both sides of the dying woman’s divided family. A woman shops for beads purely to avoid watching the story on TV. A salesman selling blow-guns that fire mini-marshmallows talks about how this case just prompted him to draft a living will.
Steve Seixas, who sells costume jewelry at the flea market, starts his day with the coin salesman at the table near his, telling him, “Pray for Terri.” The 62-year-old can’t remember the first day he heard the words “Terri Schiavo,” but it has been at least since he moved here from Ohio four years ago.
The Schiavo case flits by for tourists passing through Pinellas Park on their way to the dog track or the beaches or the casino boats. But Seixas knows that here, it seems like a permanent part of the scenery.
“Everybody has known about this story here,” he said. “We’ve all been following it for years.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
<!– ART CREDITCHRIS O'MEARA : ASSOCIATED PRESS
ART CREDIT–> <!– CAPTIONTEXTKira Black of West Palm Beach, Fla., prays for Terri Schiavo after placing a rose on the sidewalk outside husband Michael Schiavo’s house in Clearwater.
CAPTIONTEXT–> <!– ART CREDITSPENCER PLATT : GETTY IMAGES
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTOutside Terri Schiavo's hospice, disabled supporters leave their wheelchairs as a way to protest the removal of her feeding tube.
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