Westville: Unlikely first in

South Jersey working toward

gay-partner rights.

By Kristen A. Graham. philly.com from the Web, January 29, 2006

Westville, NJ -- Donna Domico is a Westville lifer -- she knows every inch of the mile-square, working-class borough with the American flag water tower and the strong sense of tradition.

She got her first job when she was a teenager, running lab tests in the Gloucester County borough's water and sewer department.  Domico, now 43, has never moved away and never worked anywhere else.

"I'm looking at giving potentially 37 years of my life to Westville," she said.  "That's not a job, it's a commitment.  It's like I'm married to the town."

Beginning last January, Domico, now superintendent of public works, raised the question:  Shouldn't Westville keep up its end of the marriage bargain?

Domico forced Westville into an unlikely position -- though the town elders didn't ask to be civil rights pioneers, the borough in September became the first municipality in South Jersey to offer employees full domestic-partner health and pension benefits.

New Jersey has been a key battleground in gay rights issues; it is one of four states that allows same-sex couples to register as domestic partners.  Next month, the state Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in a suit that could legalize same-sex marriage.

And, in a case that reached its emotional coda last week, Ocean County freeholders reversed their position, granting health and pension benefits to domestic partners after a 23-year county employee, dying of cancer, had pleaded with them for months.

That case attracted wide attention and spurred a number of counties statewide to quickly adopt domestic-partner benefits.  A 2004 state law allows local governments to provide the same benefits to domestic partners as they do to married employees and retirees.

In Westville, the quest was quieter.

"I never heard anyone say, 'We want to blaze a trail,' " said Bill Packer, borough mayor.  "We just wanted to be fair to our employee."

For most of his life, Packer has known the warm woman with the easy smile, hazel eyes, and blond hair that brushes against her Pittsburgh Steelers jacket -- she was his children's baby-sitter and softball coach.

"Nice girl.  Brave girl.  Wears her heart on her sleeve," he said of Domico.

Growing up as one of eight children in a close Italian Catholic family, Domico was taught to give everyone a fair shake.

"It was never black and white.  Everything was gray," she said.

Domico married young and divorced after six years, dating men after the split.

Then a female friend kissed her.  She was confused, but eventually began seeing women.

Later, she told her ex-husband she was a lesbian.

"I felt vindicated," she said.  "It took me a long time to feel complete."

In 1996, she came out to her mother. Rita Domico begged her daughter not to tell her father, who had a bad heart.

But Domico insisted.  She had to be true to herself.

"My father was cool as a cucumber.  He said, 'Oh, I already knew.' "

Around the same time, she met Jen Clarke, who worked at Schileen's Pub, a popular bar in town.  Friends at first, they started dating three years ago.

The relationship deepened.  On New Year's Eve 2004, Domico slipped a diamond on Clarke's finger and proposed.

While they were planning a civil union in Vermont, the couple registered as domestic partners last January.  They took it lightly at first, slipping away on their lunch hour.

Then the seriousness of what they were doing began to settle in.  New Jersey's domestic-partnership law afforded formal recognition in the eyes of the state, but little else.

Clarke works full time but paid for her own benefits, and that weighed on Domico.

"Legally, if something were to happen to me, what would happen to Jen?" she said.

After they registered, Domico formally requested that Clarke be added to her benefits.

A few days later, she received a letter from the borough administrator saying that it wasn't possible, that even if the Borough Council decided to cover domestic partners, that couldn't be done until September, when the borough renewed its insurance policy.

The issue simmered for months, working through the personnel committee.

In the meantime, Clarke and Domico's civil union ceremony took place June 4 in Vermont.

Domico's nieces were flower girls.  Her nephew carried their rings on a pillow her brother made; their sisters were bridesmaids; their mothers escorted them down separate aisles to the spot where they met.

Clarke and Domico wore long, white dresses and, before 75 friends and family members, they vowed to love each other forever.

"The intensity of what you pledge is equal to marriage," Domico said.  "It was cosmic.  God had a big smile that day."

When they returned home, things still weren't settled with the borough.  In order for Clarke to be added to Domico's policy, action had to be taken by the final council meeting in August.

The matter was on the agenda of the first meeting of the month, when Domico was away on vacation.

Asked to advise the council on the matter, Borough Solicitor Robert P. Becker III said he would not take sides.  But he warned of the dangers of extending domestic-partnership benefits.

"I see a real problem of the unknown," he said at the meeting.  "I'm saying do it with your eyes wide open."

The world, he said, is changing.

"That's society today," Becker said.  "Whether you believe in the morals of it or religiously, that's just the way it is.  When somebody is married what I would call normal, we have to give them benefits anyway."

Packer, the mayor, said it was a tough call.

"But it was the right thing to do.  We've been very lucky to have her," he said.

Westville is the kind of small town that's rare these days, he said.

"We take care of our own," said Packer.  "When people need help, other people are there to help them."

The measure was tabled at that first meeting. Domico was livid, and returned from vacation to some angry buzz on local Web sites and around town.  She dismissed it.

"Discrimination is wrong.  Small minds, small people," she said.  Still, she worries a little.

Finally, the measure passed at the end of August.  Borough officials said they needed the extra time to fully understand what they were doing.  The step will cost them $5,000 annually, exactly what it would have cost them if Domico had been married to a man.

It wasn't a crusade, Domico said.  She just wanted to take care of Clarke, and someone had to be first.

Things have settled down and life is back into its normal rhythms now, and that feels right to Domico.

At Rita's Steak House and Pizzeria, a lunch counter on Broadway, where recent lunchtime chatter centered on a cold snap and on the Ocean County freeholders' decision to grant domestic-partner benefits, most people felt as if Westville had done the right thing last year.

"What's the difference?" said Diana McKinney, 45.  "If that's who she's going to spend the rest of her life with, then she should get the benefits."

On Westville and Domestic Partners

Westville population:  4,500 (2000 U.S. Census)

Median household income:  $39,570

Number of borough employees:  55

Number of employees supervised by Donna Domico, the borough's highest-paid employee:  18

Local governments besides Westville that now offer some form of benefits:  Haddon Township (pension benefits), Mount Laurel (pension benefits), Stone Harbor (pension benefits).  Earlier this month, Camden County began offering health and pension benefits for domestic partners.

Contact staff writer Kristen Graham at 856-779-3927 or kgraham@phillynews.com.  To comment, or to ask a question, go to http://go.philly.com/askgraham.