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They slipped away in Terri's shadow

The nation focused on Terri Schiavo on March 31, 2005. But around the bay area, other families suffered their own losses that day.

By LEONORA LAPETER
Published March 31, 2006

Charles Taylor took his last breath two hours before Terri Schiavo a year ago today.

His room was diagonally across the hall from Schiavo's at Hospice House Woodside and while Schiavo's life and death struggle was very public, his was very private.

Across the Tampa Bay area, dozens of families grappled with the loss of a loved one in the shadow of Schiavo's death that day last year, including three families who lost loved ones in the Pinellas Park hospice.

Carol Ferguson remembers the quiet at Hospice House Woodside as she visited with her 90-year-old father, who was slowly dying from congestive heart failure. She also remembers the chaos of news trucks and protesters outside.

"It affected you even if you tried not to let it," said Ferguson, 55, of Homosassa. "It was very stressful because of the craziness."

Her father was old-fashioned, softspoken and polite, a fighter who didn't want to die. A retired major appliance manager, he had raised a family in Gulfport and retired in 1978.

When his wife died in 1998, he lived on his own, first in the family home and later in a condo at a 55-plus retirement community.

But in 2003, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He went into Hospice House Woodside in early February 2005.

And then on March 30, Ferguson said she knew she needed to stay there. It was just a feeling. A bomb threat had been called into the hospice that night. She dozed in a chair near father until about 5 a.m., when she woke to his labored breathing.

Outside, she could hear more people coming and going inside of Schiavo's room and she knew her end also was near.

Taylor died about 7 a.m. A hospice nurse came in and pronounced him dead and straightened the bed clothes around him.

Ferguson left the room and got in her car. She drove past the protesters one last time.

"Ever feel hate? It's in the air. That's what it felt like to me," Ferguson said. "It was so in your face."

Terri Schiavo died about two hours later.

As he waited for his plane at Tampa International Airport, Alton Hooker glanced absentmindedly at the TV monitor above his head.

It was 7:30 a.m., March 31, 2005, and Terri Schiavo lay dying, her 13-day vigil without a feeding tube nearing an end, TV newscasters announced.

But Alton Hooker's thoughts were a thousand miles away with his own father in a Moline, Ill., hospital bed.

One day, Algernon "Bubbie" Hooker had been in the hospital for some tests. The next, the 65-year-old called and it felt like he was saying goodbye. Alton thought he had cancer, but his father didn't like to talk about it.

Alton thought about how the two men had formed a strong bond late in life.

Alton's mother had been only 15 or 16 when she had him, and his great-grandmother wouldn't let his father near him.

So Alton had grown up watching his father from afar as he played on the baseball field in St. Petersburg for the St. Petersburg Braves and the Oliver Alouettes (a Canadian league team). His father had grown up in Gas Plant, a predominantly black neighborhood in the footprint of Tropicana Field. He graduated from Gibbs High School in 1959 and signed with the Chicago White Sox to play on a farm team. That lasted a few years and then he played in the National Negro League for the Indianapolis Clowns. Alton, a 46-year-old supervisor for desktop support services, got onto his plane and as it rose in the air, he felt a shadow cross over his mind. He knew his father was gone.

He thought about the last conversation they'd had. He had promised his father he would drive up to Illinois in the spring and bring him and his wife back to St. Petersburg for good.

His father had moved up to Illinois to marry a woman whom he'd met at a family reunion in St. Petersburg three years before.

I kept my word, Dad, Alton thought as the plane reached the clouds. I'm coming to get you.

Corella Varga sat in a hospital room, watching her husband of 53 years die. She didn't want any tubes emanating from his mouth. She didn't want anyone to try to save him when he gave his final breath. Leslie Varga's organs were failing and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

"I had a living will for him because I didn't want him to have all these tubes because he wasn't there, he was somewhere else," the 83-year-old woman said.

She met him on a blind date when she was 25. Leslie Varga was always immaculately dressed. The two married and worked together at Revere Copper and Brass Co. in Michigan for decades, retiring to a mobile home park in Holiday in 1979.

In 1994, Leslie suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side. Corella took care of him for 10 years, bathing, feeding and pushing him around in his wheelchair. In 2003, she decided to place him in a nursing home.

In late March 2005, the 85-year-old Leslie went into the hospital. Until that point, Corella had followed the Schiavo saga.

"I thought they should pull the tubes," she said. "I think 15 years is a long time."

On March 30, Corella asked her husband if he was going to last until their 54th wedding anniversary. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't. Still she knew he understood.

A day later, sometime after 9 a.m., just as Terri Schiavo died, Leslie also took his last breath.

He'd made it to their 54th wedding anniversary.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

Terri Schiavo died in a Pinellas Park hospice March 31, 2005, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. Doctors said Schiavo fell into a persistent vegetative state after she collapsed in 1990 from a lack of oxygen to her brain, which may have been the result of a potassium deficiency. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, petitioned the courts in 1998 to remove his wife from her feeding tube. He said she had told him and others that she would not want to live for an extended period of time on life support.

Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings said they never heard her make such statements. They fought Michael Schiavo's efforts, igniting a seven-year court battle that drew worldwide attention. Terri Schiavo had no living will or advanced directive.

Ultimately, Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer ordered Schiavo's feeding tube removed. Some Florida lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush tried to intervene with legislation to keep Schiavo alive. The Republican-led U.S. Congress also tried to get involved, but Greer's ruling prevailed.

[Last modified March 31, 2006, 08:30:49]