Family's tragic year turns hopeful -The Nasheville Tennessean

By LEON ALLIGOOD - July 7. 2008

LAWRENCEBURG, Tenn. — The limousine stopped in the driveway and was immediately surrounded by dozens of friends, old and new. Inside the long vehicle were the Schankweilers: Sandee Jo, the mother, and her four children, Tommy, 17, Timmy, 15, Tonie Jo, 13, and Tayler, 9.

This was a homecoming for them, a fresh start born of tragedy.

On March 21, Tom Schankweiler Jr., the father of the family, was killed by a single shot to the head from a .22-caliber rifle.

His son, Tommy, pulled the trigger.

The son killed the father. But the father was bipolar and a heavy drinker and had repeatedly threatened to kill his son. On that terrible day, he tried. When word spread about what had happened, this small community sided with the son. People filled the courtroom to show their support, to say that he should not be imprisoned for what he did.

In the end, Tommy pleaded guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter. He received a three- to six-year prison sentence that was reduced to three years of judicial diversion, a type of probation. District Attorney General Mike Bottoms said the facts of the case showed a protracted pattern of abuse by the father.

The limo pulling up to the house Saturday was a continuation of that support. Soon after Tommy was freed, people who cared about the family hatched a plan to rehabilitate the Schankweilers' modest brick home — to rid it of memories and transform it into a place of hope and beauty.

Seven days ago, a small army of volunteer laborers descended on the house after sending the family on a week's vacation — their first in many years — to a mountaintop cabin near Pigeon Forge.

And there they stayed until the sleek limousine brought them home. The workers called it Project Fresh Start and the idea originated with James Crocker, a boyhood friend of the slain father. More than 100 people became involved in the project, and about $75,000 was donated.

Among the participants was Jimmy Williams of West Point, Tenn., who knew of the Schankweilers only through newspaper articles. But he spent a week of vacation helping out.

"I can't afford the gas to go nowhere so I thought I'd do just as well to come here and help someone else," Williams said.

A changed man

Sandee Jo Schankweiler has high cheekbones and a perfect smile of ivory that complements her thick coal-black hair and green eyes.

She sat on the lower balcony of the log cabin overlooking a panoramic view of the Great Smoky Mountains several days before the limo came to fetch the family home. Her girls were inside flipping through the cable channels. On the cabin's top level, Tommy was playing pool while Timmy prepared his rod and reel for a fishing trip.

Sandee Jo took in the view of the mountains and began to tell her story: life with a bipolar husband, being a battered spouse, being the protector of her children and, through it all, staying with the man she loved, and still loves, even though he was very ill.

It's a long story and not very pretty, she warned.

They met at a church in Avon Park, Fla. She was a teenager. He was the pastor's son. Sandee Jo thought he was handsome enough and was funny, but the fact he was a country boy was the primary attraction. She had grown up in Tampa, but dreamed of life in the country: woods, pastures, pristine nighttime skies where the city lights didn't dim the stars. They married in 1989.

At first, his temper flared occasionally. He would break things, plates and furniture, then say he would never do it again. Three years into the marriage, he had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed as bipolar. His mood went from amiable to foul in a heartbeat.

"To get his real personality you had to wait between the highs and lows," she said.

He worked at a succession of jobs, including correctional officer, carpenter and welder, but his bipolar condition worsened to the point he was placed on disability several years ago. His doctors told him to avoid stress. And that was part of the reason the family moved from Florida to 23 acres on Piney Road. "I was hoping something would help him. And he was happy in Tennessee. He always told me he didn't want me to ever go back to Florida," she said.

But Tom Jr. began drinking heavily and their lives began falling apart.

Day of terror

The day began with laughter.

That should have been her first clue, Sandee Jo remembered. On March 21, a Good Friday, she awoke and found her husband in a jovial mood. He told his sons they were going to work on improvements to the basement that day.

About 9 a.m., he reached for a whiskey bottle to have his first drink of the day, she remembered. Shortly after 2 p.m., Tommy cut a board wrong as he and his father and younger brother worked on the back porch. The father railed, obsessing about the waste of lumber. For more than a year, the strapping teen, as tall as his father, had joined his mother as a focal point for Tom Jr.'s verbal and physical rampages.

Sandee Jo heard the commotion as Tom Jr.'s anger rose by the second.

"It went all downhill from there," she said.

Tommy re-entered the house, slamming the basement door so hard that its glass shattered. Tom Jr., livid and drunk on cheap whiskey, lumbered up the stairs after his son. Sandee Jo reached up and tried to pull her husband down the stairs.

"I was hoping so bad that he would fall," she recalled. "I knew he was drunk and I knew his equilibrium was off. I thought if he could just lose his balance that would put him down for a little while."

On this day, he was unstoppable. What she can't forget is her husband's face as he sloughed off her tackle. "He had this monster robotic kind of a look," she said.

She pleaded with her husband, but he wouldn't stop, following Tommy to the front yard. She said the boy pleaded, but her husband "chunked" a hammer and bricks at the boy and at one point picked up a pickax and began slamming it into the house.

"And he was saying awful, awful things about how he was going to kill him," she said. "I told him to just run, just get out of here, to go. I knew something was going to happen."

Tommy took off at a fast run down Piney Road toward the home of "Buttermilk" and Patsy Wisdom, two of the few neighbors the family knew. When Tom Jr. saw his son was running, he took off after him on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

"I said, 'What are you going to do?' He said, 'I'm going to kill him.' He took off out of our driveway. He had to have been going 80 or 90 miles an hour. He opened it up all the way," Sandee Jo said.

For reasons no one can explain, the irate father did not see his son running down the road.

"I just feel the Lord was watching over him," she said.

Tom Jr. returned to the house. Meanwhile, the mother called the Wisdoms and told Tommy to stay put.

Deed is done

Satisfied her son was out of imminent danger, Sandee Jo turned to calming down her husband and keeping him from coming inside the house, where he was apt to wreck the place. Sandee Jo did not call the police. In fact, she rarely asked law enforcement to intervene during their volatile 18-year marriage. The reason: Tom Jr. disliked cops.

"He'd always say, 'Why don't you call the police? You'll see what I do to them.' I'll tell you this: I knew he would kill cops. I didn't doubt him for a second," she said.

Sandee Jo feared that if lawmen arrived her husband would open fire "and if he did something like that he would just go ahead and finish it with all of us. In his normal state he would never hurt us, but in this altered state I knew he could," she said.

Four hours after the episode began, Tom Jr. told Sandee Jo he wanted to eat a sandwich and lie down. It was after 6 p.m. and darkness had settled. Suddenly, Tommy entered through the front door.

Sandee Jo told her son, "You've got to go."

But Tommy wouldn't leave.

"He said, 'Mama, I'm not going.' "

The mother told her son this was not like other times. But he stood his ground.

The mother told her son to stay by the front door while she went to the basement to usher Timmy, Tonie Jo and Tayler out of the house. The girls were crying, but she told them to get far away from the house.

When she returned, Tommy was holding the gun, a .22-caliber rifle. She told him to keep the rifle ready as a scare tactic in case Tom Jr. woke up.

"That's when he told me," she remembered.

"He said, 'Mom, I shot Dad.' "

House of dreams

The unveiling of the Schankweilers' new and improved house was kept a surprise to them up until the last moment. The mother and children were led to a spot behind a tractor parked in the front yard. Borrowing a line from the Extreme Makeover television show, the crowd shouted: "Buttermilk, move that tractor."

But Buttermilk Wisdom, the neighbor Tommy had run to that night, fumbled with the keys and couldn't start the tractor on the first try.

The Schankweilers had left a home in need of patching. They received a showpiece upon their return. As they were led through each of the rooms, Sandee Jo and the girls giggled. The boys just kept saying, "Wow."

After their tour, it was everyone else's turn to see the finished house. The boys and their mom stood on the front porch to greet everyone. The girls flitted from room to room with friends. At every new discovery they emitted peals of laughter.

Also on hand was Tom Schankweiler Sr. Three weeks after the shooting, the house next door to his daughter-in-law's home had gone up for sale. The Florida minister retired early and moved to Tennessee.

"My wife and I are here to pour our lives into our grandchildren, into Sandee Jo, and help them recover from this," he said.

On the porch Tommy found himself being bear hugged by a succession of little old ladies.

"You're a good boy," one of them told him.

"Yes m'am," he said.