I don't know the politics of Bob Schindler (Terris father), but
accordning to the following, he pulled the plug on his mother

http://coldfury.com/reason/?p=244

Extract
But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong
Terri’s life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to
turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time,
and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out.
“I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I
asked, ‘If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of
surviving, of coming out of this thing?’” Robert says. “I was very angry
with God because I didn’t want to make those decisions.”


HKrause wrote:

There's just no limit to Republican hyprocrisy


latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines


THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads
Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in '88 to
let his comatose father die.
By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek
Times Staff Writers

March 27, 2005

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital
during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency
sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's
Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in
a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at
Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom
DeLay (R-Texas).

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have
defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own
wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by
intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray
DeLay.

Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old
DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate
counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in
the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to
shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who
doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years,
connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as
well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in
removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman
quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the
congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last
week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew —
we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the
congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against
connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong
life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement
with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction:
"Do not resuscitate."

On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in
attendance."

"The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different
than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority leader, who
declined requests for an interview.

"The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all need to
survive. His father was on a ventilator and other machines to sustain
him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.

There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely
brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical
assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from
being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them had a living
will.

This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's personal
brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from court files, medical
records and interviews with family members.



It was a pleasant late afternoon in the Hill Country of Texas on Nov.
17, 1988.

At Charles and Maxine DeLay's home, set on a limestone bluff of cedars
and live oaks, it also was a moment of triumph. Charles and his brother,
Jerry DeLay, two avid tinkerers, had just finished work on a new
backyard tram — an elevator-like device that would carry family and
friends down a 200-foot slope to the blue-green waters of Canyon Lake.

The two men called for their wives to hop aboard. Charles pushed the
button and the maiden run began. Within seconds, a horrific screeching
noise echoed across the still lake — "a sickening sound," said a
neighbor. The tram was in trouble.

Maxine, seated up front in the four-passenger trolley, said her husband
repeatedly tried to engage the emergency brake, but the rail car kept
picking up speed. Halfway down the bank, it was free-wheeling, according
to accident investigators.

Moments later, it jumped the track and slammed into a tree, scattering
passengers and debris in all directions.

"It was awful, just awful," recalled Karl Braddick, now 86, the DeLays'
neighbor at the time. "I came running over, and it was a terrible sight."

He called for emergency help. Rescue workers had trouble bringing the
injured victims up the steep terrain. Jerry's wife, JoAnne, suffered
broken bones and a shattered elbow. Charles, who had been thrown
head-first into a tree, was in grave condition.

"He was all but gone," said Braddick, gesturing at the spot of the
accident as he offered a visitor a ride down to the lake in his own
tram. "He would have been better off if he'd died right there and then."

But Charles DeLay hung on. In the ambulance on his way to a hospital in
New Braunfels 15 miles away, he tried to speak.

"He wasn't making any sense; it was mainly just cuss words," recalled
Maxine with a faint, fond smile.

Four hours later, he was airlifted by helicopter to the Brooke Army
Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston. Admission records show he arrived
with multiple injuries, including broken ribs and a brain hemorrhage.

Tom DeLay flew to his father's bedside, where, along with his two
brothers and a sister, they joined their mother. In the weeks that
followed, the congressman made repeated trips back from Washington, his
family said. Maxine seldom left her husband's side.

"Mama stayed at the hospital with him all the time. Oh, it was terrible
for everyone," said Alvina "Vi" Skogen, a former sister-in-law of the
congressman. Neighbor Braddick visited the hospital and said it seemed
very clear to everyone that there was little prospect of recovery.

"He had no consciousness that I could see," Braddick said. "He did a bit
of moaning and groaning, I guess, but you could see there was no way he
was coming back."

Maxine DeLay agreed that she was never aware of any consciousness on her
husband's part during the long days of her bedside vigil — with one
possible exception.

"Whenever Randy walked into the room, his heart, his pulse rate, would
go up a little bit," she said of their son, Randall, the congressman's
younger brother, who lives near Houston.

Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his head, face,
neck and abdomen. They checked for lung damage and performed a
tracheostomy to assist his breathing. But they could not prevent steady
deterioration.

Then, infections complicated the senior DeLay's fight for life. Finally,
his organs began to fail. His family and physicians confronted the
dreaded choice so many other Americans have faced: to make heroic
efforts or to let the end come.

"Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Skogen, one of his
daughters-in-law at the time. "There was no decision for the family to
make. He made it for them."

The preliminary decision to withhold dialysis and other treatments fell
to Maxine along with Randall and her daughter Tena — and "Tom went
along." He raised no objection, said the congressman's mother.

Family members said they prayed.

Jerry DeLay "felt terribly about the accident" that injured his brother,
said his wife, JoAnne. "He prayed that, if [Charles] couldn't have
quality of life, that God would take him — and that is exactly what he
did."

Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., according to his death certificate,
27 days after plummeting down the hillside.



The family then turned to lawyers.

In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of San
Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and maker of a
coupling that the family said had failed and caused the tram to hurtle
out of control.

The family's wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of negligence
and sought actual and punitive damages. Lawyers for the companies denied
the allegations and countersued the surviving designer of the tram
system, Jerry DeLay.

The case thrust Rep. DeLay into unfamiliar territory — the front page of
a civil complaint as a plaintiff. He is an outspoken defender of
business against what he calls the crippling effects of "predatory,
self-serving litigation."

The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation for, among
other things, the dead father's "physical pain and suffering, mental
anguish and trauma," and the mother's grief, sorrow and loss of
companionship.

Their lawsuit also alleged violations of the Texas product liability law.

The DeLay case moved slowly through the Texas judicial system,
accumulating more than 500 pages of motions, affidavits and disclosures
over nearly three years. Among the affidavits was one filed by the
congressman, but family members said he had little direct involvement in
the lawsuit, leaving that to his brother Randall, an attorney.

Rep. DeLay, who since has taken a leading role promoting tort reform,
wants to rein in trial lawyers to protect American businesses from what
he calls "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits" that raise insurance premiums
and "kill jobs."

Last September, he expressed less than warm sentiment for attorneys when
he took the floor of the House to condemn trial lawyers who, he said,
"get fat off the pain" of plaintiffs and off "the hard work" of defendants.

Aides for DeLay defended his role as a plaintiff in the family lawsuit,
saying he did not follow the legal case and was not aware of its final
outcome.

The case was resolved in 1993 with payment of an undisclosed sum, said
to be about $250,000, according to sources familiar with the
out-of-court settlement. DeLay signed over his share of any proceeds to
his mother, said his aides.

Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically designed to
override state laws on product liability such as the one cited in his
family's lawsuit. The legislation provided sweeping exemptions for
product sellers.

The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he objected to
the DeLay-backed measure because it "tilts against American families and
would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured
by a defective product."



After her husband's death, Maxine DeLay scrapped the mangled tram at the
bottom of the hill and sold the family's lake house.

Today, she lives alone in a Houston senior citizen residence. Like much
of the country, she is following news developments in the Schiavo case
and her son's prominent role.

She acknowledged questions comparing her family's decision in 1988 to
the Schiavo conflict with a slight smile. "It's certainly interesting,
isn't it?"

She had a new hairdo for Easter and puffed on a cigarette outside her
assisted-living residence as she sat back comparing the cases.

Like her son, she believed there might be hope for Terri Schiavo's
recovery. That's what made her family's experience different, she said.
Charles had no hope.

"There was no chance he was ever coming back," she said.

I don't know the political leanings of TErris Father Bob Schindler, but
according to the following, he pulled the plug on his mother.

http://coldfury.com/reason/?p=244

Extract

But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong
Terri’s life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to
turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time,
and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out.
“I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I
asked, ‘If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of
surviving, of coming out of this thing?’” Robert says. “I was very angry
with God because I didn’t want to make those decisions.”

HKrause wrote:
There's just no limit to Republican hyprocrisy


latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines


THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads
Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in '88 to
let his comatose father die.
By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek
Times Staff Writers

March 27, 2005

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital
during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency
sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's
Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in
a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at
Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom
DeLay (R-Texas).

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have
defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own
wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by
intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray
DeLay.

Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old
DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate
counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in
the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to
shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who
doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years,
connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as
well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in
removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman
quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the
congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last
week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew —
we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the
congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against
connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong
life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement
with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction:
"Do not resuscitate."

On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in
attendance."

"The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different
than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority leader, who
declined requests for an interview.

"The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all need to
survive. His father was on a ventilator and other machines to sustain
him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.

There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely
brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical
assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from
being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them had a living
will.

This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's personal
brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from court files, medical
records and interviews with family members.



It was a pleasant late afternoon in the Hill Country of Texas on Nov.
17, 1988.

At Charles and Maxine DeLay's home, set on a limestone bluff of cedars
and live oaks, it also was a moment of triumph. Charles and his brother,
Jerry DeLay, two avid tinkerers, had just finished work on a new
backyard tram — an elevator-like device that would carry family and
friends down a 200-foot slope to the blue-green waters of Canyon Lake.

The two men called for their wives to hop aboard. Charles pushed the
button and the maiden run began. Within seconds, a horrific screeching
noise echoed across the still lake — "a sickening sound," said a
neighbor. The tram was in trouble.

Maxine, seated up front in the four-passenger trolley, said her husband
repeatedly tried to engage the emergency brake, but the rail car kept
picking up speed. Halfway down the bank, it was free-wheeling, according
to accident investigators.

Moments later, it jumped the track and slammed into a tree, scattering
passengers and debris in all directions.

"It was awful, just awful," recalled Karl Braddick, now 86, the DeLays'
neighbor at the time. "I came running over, and it was a terrible sight."

He called for emergency help. Rescue workers had trouble bringing the
injured victims up the steep terrain. Jerry's wife, JoAnne, suffered
broken bones and a shattered elbow. Charles, who had been thrown
head-first into a tree, was in grave condition.

"He was all but gone," said Braddick, gesturing at the spot of the
accident as he offered a visitor a ride down to the lake in his own
tram. "He would have been better off if he'd died right there and then."

But Charles DeLay hung on. In the ambulance on his way to a hospital in
New Braunfels 15 miles away, he tried to speak.

"He wasn't making any sense; it was mainly just cuss words," recalled
Maxine with a faint, fond smile.

Four hours later, he was airlifted by helicopter to the Brooke Army
Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston. Admission records show he arrived
with multiple injuries, including broken ribs and a brain hemorrhage.

Tom DeLay flew to his father's bedside, where, along with his two
brothers and a sister, they joined their mother. In the weeks that
followed, the congressman made repeated trips back from Washington, his
family said. Maxine seldom left her husband's side.

"Mama stayed at the hospital with him all the time. Oh, it was terrible
for everyone," said Alvina "Vi" Skogen, a former sister-in-law of the
congressman. Neighbor Braddick visited the hospital and said it seemed
very clear to everyone that there was little prospect of recovery.

"He had no consciousness that I could see," Braddick said. "He did a bit
of moaning and groaning, I guess, but you could see there was no way he
was coming back."

Maxine DeLay agreed that she was never aware of any consciousness on her
husband's part during the long days of her bedside vigil — with one
possible exception.

"Whenever Randy walked into the room, his heart, his pulse rate, would
go up a little bit," she said of their son, Randall, the congressman's
younger brother, who lives near Houston.

Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his head, face,
neck and abdomen. They checked for lung damage and performed a
tracheostomy to assist his breathing. But they could not prevent steady
deterioration.

Then, infections complicated the senior DeLay's fight for life. Finally,
his organs began to fail. His family and physicians confronted the
dreaded choice so many other Americans have faced: to make heroic
efforts or to let the end come.

"Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Skogen, one of his
daughters-in-law at the time. "There was no decision for the family to
make. He made it for them."

The preliminary decision to withhold dialysis and other treatments fell
to Maxine along with Randall and her daughter Tena — and "Tom went
along." He raised no objection, said the congressman's mother.

Family members said they prayed.

Jerry DeLay "felt terribly about the accident" that injured his brother,
said his wife, JoAnne. "He prayed that, if [Charles] couldn't have
quality of life, that God would take him — and that is exactly what he
did."

Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., according to his death certificate,
27 days after plummeting down the hillside.



The family then turned to lawyers.

In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of San
Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and maker of a
coupling that the family said had failed and caused the tram to hurtle
out of control.

The family's wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of negligence
and sought actual and punitive damages. Lawyers for the companies denied
the allegations and countersued the surviving designer of the tram
system, Jerry DeLay.

The case thrust Rep. DeLay into unfamiliar territory — the front page of
a civil complaint as a plaintiff. He is an outspoken defender of
business against what he calls the crippling effects of "predatory,
self-serving litigation."

The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation for, among
other things, the dead father's "physical pain and suffering, mental
anguish and trauma," and the mother's grief, sorrow and loss of
companionship.

Their lawsuit also alleged violations of the Texas product liability law.

The DeLay case moved slowly through the Texas judicial system,
accumulating more than 500 pages of motions, affidavits and disclosures
over nearly three years. Among the affidavits was one filed by the
congressman, but family members said he had little direct involvement in
the lawsuit, leaving that to his brother Randall, an attorney.

Rep. DeLay, who since has taken a leading role promoting tort reform,
wants to rein in trial lawyers to protect American businesses from what
he calls "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits" that raise insurance premiums
and "kill jobs."

Last September, he expressed less than warm sentiment for attorneys when
he took the floor of the House to condemn trial lawyers who, he said,
"get fat off the pain" of plaintiffs and off "the hard work" of defendants.

Aides for DeLay defended his role as a plaintiff in the family lawsuit,
saying he did not follow the legal case and was not aware of its final
outcome.

The case was resolved in 1993 with payment of an undisclosed sum, said
to be about $250,000, according to sources familiar with the
out-of-court settlement. DeLay signed over his share of any proceeds to
his mother, said his aides.

Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically designed to
override state laws on product liability such as the one cited in his
family's lawsuit. The legislation provided sweeping exemptions for
product sellers.

The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he objected to
the DeLay-backed measure because it "tilts against American families and
would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured
by a defective product."



After her husband's death, Maxine DeLay scrapped the mangled tram at the
bottom of the hill and sold the family's lake house.

Today, she lives alone in a Houston senior citizen residence. Like much
of the country, she is following news developments in the Schiavo case
and her son's prominent role.

She acknowledged questions comparing her family's decision in 1988 to
the Schiavo conflict with a slight smile. "It's certainly interesting,
isn't it?"

She had a new hairdo for Easter and puffed on a cigarette outside her
assisted-living residence as she sat back comparing the cases.

Like her son, she believed there might be hope for Terri Schiavo's
recovery. That's what made her family's experience different, she said.
Charles had no hope.

"There was no chance he was ever coming back," she said.