Why us? Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to live and love
By PATTY RYAN
Published October 25, 2003
Her first husband went to Vietnam and didn't come back.
Her second survived the war and helped raise two children. Rita and Bob Schmitt stayed together 38 years, and then in June 2002, they learned he had brain cancer. That summer, Mrs. Schmitt went to the tag office and ordered a custom license plate.
Bob Schmitt died Nov. 18, leaving her a widow again.
For comfort, she looks to the license plate. It says, "WHY US."
No one could blame Mrs. Schmitt, 69, if she indulged in a little self-pity.
WHY US, her plate puzzles, as she tools around town, alone, in the Ford Taurus.
WHY US, it wonders, as she ventures to WestShore Plaza to walk, hoping to ease the stiffness of knees replaced three times.
WHY US. Even the dog has died.
But Mrs. Schmitt, who likes to laugh, is here to cheer us up.
The license plate doesn't mean what we think.
It's not a complaint, not any more.
"It was a complaint years ago," she concedes, not of the tag but of the expression.
In her younger years, if bad things happened, she would shake her head and say "Why me?" or, with her husband, "Why us?"
The phrase stuck, but eventually it broke loose and turned upside down or inside out. Its meaning changed. By the time Bob Schmitt died at a hospice in Sun City Center, half empty had become half full.
WHY US. Why are we usually so lucky? That's what she means.
"I was a little bitter at first," Mrs. Schmitt says. "We were doing so well and then we got kicked in the teeth. He said, "Well, it could have been worse.' "
Yes, she agreed, it could have been.
They fell in love at an Air Force base in Big Spring, Texas, where Rita, newly widowed, was lifeguard at the officers' pool. Her kids, the eldest just 6, befriended an airman named "Smitty" and brought him home for Thanksgiving. One turkey dinner led to 34 more (two were pre-empted by war). Along the way, in 1971, the Schmitts drew a tour at MacDill.
Bob Schmitt took a job as a Hillsborough corrections officer, one he kept for 24 years. The two planned for retirement.
He didn't suffer long. Mrs. Schmitt counts that as a break. He was brave till the day he died, she says, and he always mustered a smile for her, so how could she dare to mope? The license plate reminds her of that.
"It gives me a little bit of get-up-and-go when I see that. There are so many people struggling that don't have anything. WHY US. I see it and it brings me to my senses."
Why, she asks, are servers at the Egg Platter restaurant - where she likes to order feta omelets - so nice to her?
Why are her two kids so great?
Why is she comfortable, financially? Why can she afford to help the Humane Society, when others can't afford to eat?
Why did the Orient Road jail inmates make sympathy cards - one designed like a chess board - after her husband died? Why had Bob taught them chess?
"I see other people, like the situation with the Schiavos, and I think, "Oh, my God,' " Mrs. Schmitt says. "I say "why us' and look at them."
The days ahead will require optimism.
Bob's birthday, the first without him.
Thanksgiving. Christmas.
She's a little scared, she admits.
But she has a plan.
After Thanksgiving, after the visit from her daughter and grandson, she will go to the Humane Society. She will wander amid the cages, until she sees the right set of eyes. And she will come home with a dog, a small one. A new chapter in her life will begin.
"It may sound corny, as old as I am, that I should be such a dreamer," she says, "but if we all just pulled together and found the good things instead of always the bad, the world would be a better place."
For now, two servers from the Egg Platter have dropped by her South Tampa home. They volunteered to help her mail a package, a gift for her daughter-in-law. She's delighted.
"Life," says Mrs. Schmitt, "is good."
- Tampa's Kennedy Boulevard was once called Grand Central. Now Grand Central is the name of a weekly column by Times senior editor Patty Ryan. Reach Patty Ryan at 226-3382 or pryan@sptimes.com
