It was shortly after 3 a.m. when Ramona Santiago and Carol Urban departed one of Atlantic City’s casinos and began the drive back to Philadelphia.
The couple had been there with Urban’s family. The party had started the night before, on July 12, as a birthday celebration for Urban’s father at her brother’s house in New Jersey.
After a barbecue feast and birthday cake, someone had suggested capping the evening with some action at the casinos.
But their trip home was tragically interrupted when, less than 20 miles from the Walt Whitman Bridge, they collided with a drunken driver traveling the wrong way on the Atlantic City Expressway.
Santiago and Urban met in an Internet chat room more than three years ago. After a few weeks of communicating online, they decided to exchange phone numbers, which led to their first date and Urban traveling to Santiago’s home in the Central Jersey shore town of Ocean Grove.
"Want to hear something funny?" asked Santiago, 34. "Want to know what was our first date?"
Urban laughed and answered, "Dunkin’ Donuts."
"Ever since, we’ve been living near a Dunkin’ Donuts," Santiago said. "We love Dunkin’ Donuts."
The two hit it off, although Santiago describes Urban as her "total opposite."
For two years, Urban, 43, a lifelong South Philadelphian, moved to New Jersey to live with Santiago and her son, who is now 14. During that time, Urban’s mother died, and Santiago’s hours were cut at the Kmart where she worked.
The couple decided to try their luck back in South Philly, on the 1700 block of South 22nd Street, where Urban could take care of her father. Today, they both work at the airport for UPS. Santiago’s son, however, remained in New Jersey living with family.
He has no problem with his mother’s sexuality, Santiago explained. Rather, he didn’t want to leave his friends and home in New Jersey, she said.
"My son wants Mommy to move back to Central Jersey, but Mommy can’t do it because Mommy works over here," she said. "It’s not so much because I want to, but because I have to work. He doesn’t have a problem living with us as long as we move where he is."
On June 23, the couple traveled to Vermont, where they were married in a civil-union ceremony by a justice of the peace. The ceremony was simple, they said — exchanging of vows, lighting of unity candles. In the end, they were presented with a license certifying their marriage is legal in Vermont.
Passed in 2000, the Vermont civil-union law is the only one of its kind in the United States. The law provides gay couples with all of the same marital benefits as heterosexual couples, but these rights are not recognized anywhere outside of Vermont, including Pennsylvania, which has laws defining marriage as a contract between a man and a woman.
Massachusetts legislators are drafting similar laws to those in Vermont, and in California, Gov. Gray Davis signed domestic partnership legislation earlier this week. It will take effect in 2005.
Hawaii allows what it calls "reciprocal beneficiary partnerships," which confer numerous rights to gay couples, except health insurance through a partner’s employer.
Last summer, a Pennsylvania court determined Philadelphia’s domestic partnership laws violated state marriage laws. The city had three such laws on the books. Two applied only to municipal employees, extending health benefits and the right to claim a loved one’s pension to partners of gays and lesbians working for the city. Another law offered same-sex couples the same exemption to the 3-percent real-estate tax as married couples, allowing property to be transferred from one partner to another free of charge.
The city has appealed the court’s decision.
While Urban drove, Santiago rode in the passenger seat with her eyes closed, her mind alternating between sleep and semi-consciousness.
Urban saw the headlights of the 1997 Nissan Maxima aimed her way and automatically assumed it belonged to a highway crew doing construction work on the shoulder of the road.
"Then the lights started getting closer and faster," she said.
Urban had been traveling in the right lane, so she switched to the left, hoping to give whatever was coming a wide berth. The headlights moved with her.
"He’s now coming straight at me," Urban said. "He’s approximately 75 feet in front of me when he started drifting back into the right lane."
Urban remained in the left lane, and at the last second the Nissan swerved into her path. Santiago jolted awake a millisecond before the crash.
The cars impacted head-on — the Nissan traveling at 75 mph. Urban’s Bronco spun off the road into a ditch and was pointed in the opposite direction when it stopped. Urban walked away from accident, as did the driver of the other vehicle and his passenger, who was also drunk.
But Santiago was pinned in the wreckage. The 12th vertebrae of her spine had been crushed. Rescue workers cut Santiago from the wreckage and transported her to Cooper Hospital in Camden.
Two days later, doctors operated on her back. A bone graft was taken from Santiago’s hip and implanted in her spine, along with two titanium rods and eight screws. The surgery took six hours. Santiago also was fitted with a hard plastic body brace that Urban likes to call her "turtle suit."
Shortly after their wedding in Vermont, Santiago and Urban had contacted an attorney provided by UPS to complete the merger of their lives. The lawyer helped them establish power of attorney for one another.
The move proved to be critical for Urban to be able to help take care of — and even visit — her wife while she was in the hospital. Santiago spent the first several days of her hospitalization in the intensive care unit. Hospital rules limited visitors to family members, but Urban was granted permission because of the legal steps the couple had taken.
She was also able to obtain information for Santiago from her health insurer and file the paperwork for her disability compensation.
"Ever since the crash, she has been a blessing to me," Santiago said. "She is like my little Wonder Woman."
Santiago is expected to make a full recovery in six to eight months.
Neither Santiago nor Urban said they would describe themselves as gay activists. Most of their neighbors know they are gay — most even congratulated them on their recent marriage — yet they say they don’t advertise their lifestyle.
Still, the couple sees no better example than their recent experience as a reason for Pennsylvania to follow the precedent set by states like Vermont and legalize unions between same-sex couples.
"We want to show people that our relationship is real," Santiago said. "It’s not something to be scared of … The only difference is we are in a same-sex relationship. It boils down to one thing — we love each other.
"How many people can honestly say, ‘I love to go home to be with my wife?’ Not too many people," she added. "Whatever I’m doing, I know she’s there. I love coming home to her."
Urban gets frustrated by comments made by President Bush and U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum against gay marriage, but she remains optimistic that more states will change their position.
"One will fall in behind the other," Urban said. "It’s not going away. It’s not a disease. You can’t catch it. It’s just everyday life."
