Schooling the young in sadness of Schiavo
By MARY JO MELONE, Times Staff Writer
Published October 21, 2003
There is no way around it.
Cross Bayou Elementary School and Woodside Hospice House are side by side on a dead-end street, 102nd Avenue in Pinellas Park. To get to the school, you must pass the hospice, which these days means facing the knot of protesters in front of the place where Terri Schiavo lies dying, while legislators in Tallahassee debate her fate.
You must see the sign scolding Gov. Jeb Bush for failing to save Schiavo and the other sign that calls for the removal of Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer, who ruled against her parents.
There are times, I am told, when the signs speak of killing and murder.
The proximity of hospice and school has created a terrible conflict - not between the right to die and the right to live, but over what to tell the children.
People on the picket line say children can handle the words and should know the issues, as if they were little adults.
Some people at Cross Bayou disagree.
The signs are upsetting enough that the principal, Marcia Stone, calls the protests down the street a "major disruption."
TV satellite trucks jam the shoulder of 102nd Avenue.
What had been a two-lane road is temporarily reduced to one. School buses have trouble making their daily maneuvers.
And many parents who normally let their kids walk or bike to school - a route that took them straight through the crowd of protesters and the fleet of TV trucks - are instead driving them. Escorts shepherd the kids who still walk or take bikes.
On Monday afternoon, as school ended, the escorts included Stone and the school's PTA president, Marti Bouknecht. She pointed to a sign that read, "Terrorizing people with disabilities," and then noted that disabled children attend Cross Bayou.
What were those children and their parents to think, she asked.
Such niceties have been forgotten on 102nd Avenue, although protesters did stand clear of the sidewalk at a police officer's request so the parade of kids could leave school Monday afternoon.
The protesters did not do what the people at Cross Bayou really want. They want the signs to drop briefly in the morning and afternoon when the children are coming and going, so that kids don't have to look at the words, big and scrawled on poster boards.
The people at Cross Bayou seem leery of the protesters, so they asked the police to intervene and pop the question. The police said the signs are part of the protesters' right to demonstrate, and that nothing can be done.
Still, you'd think reason might prevail. Who would want to upset a kid?
Not me, said protester Jackie Miller, when I asked her. Then she pointed to her own sign and asked, "What's offensive with "Give Terri to Her Mother'?"
Nothing, of course, but we're not talking about one sign.
Children are besieged by talk of death and dying, killing and murder. They see it on the street. They see it on the news. They talk about it in the school halls and get scared. They wonder if their moms and dads are going to be hurt.
And parents are then required to do the difficult job of explaining the protesters and the signs and the TV trucks.
"I wish these people would understand these are children," said Bouknecht.
Same here. I wish that the same people who purport to have such strong feelings about life would feel compassion for the young ones caught in the painful civics lesson under way in Pinellas Park.
How ironic it is. In the zeal to save the daughter of Bob and Mary Schindler, the protesters overlook the desires of other parents to love and protect their own children.
- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402. |
