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sissippi, one of the America's most conservative states, to recognize her same-sex marriage. She hopes to do so by getting a divorce.
• She and Dana Ann Melancon traveled from Mississippi to San Francisco to get married in 2008. The wedding was all Czekala-Chatham hoped it would be, the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, dreams for a promising future. She wrote the vows herself.
• The couple bought a house together in Walls, a town of about 1,100 in northern Mississippi's DeSoto County in June 2009. But the marriage was tumultuous and, like so many others, it didn't last.
• Czekala-Chatham, a 51-year-old credit analyst and mother of two teenage sons from an earlier straight marriage, filed for divorce in chancery court in September. She wants to force Mississippi to recognize the same-sex marriage for the purpose of granting the divorce.
• "It's humiliating to know that you spend that money, that time to be in a committed relationship and for it to end. I mean, that hurts. But then to be in a state that doesn't recognize you as a human being, or recognize you for who you are, for who you love, it's hard," Czekala-Chatham said during an interview at her current home in Hernando. "I'm not treated like the neighbors next door. I'm treated like a second-class citizen."
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Woman whose baby died in Alaska plane crash, leads rescuers to survivors, wreckage
• ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- After phoning for help in resuscitating her baby, a 25-year-old woman on a plane that crashed in remote southwest Alaska led searchers hampered by cold and fog to the crash site.
• The single-engine aircraft carrying 10 people went down Friday night near the village of Saint Marys, killing four people and injured six.
• Melanie Coffee of Mountain Village walked nearly a mile toward lights in the village to meet rescuers.
• "I believe she's the real hero in this," said Saint Marys Village Police Officer Fred Lamont Jr., one of the dozens from his community and surrounding villages who responded to the crash.
• The Hageland Aviation Cessna 208 turboprop left Bethel at 5:40 p.m. on a scheduled flight for Mountain Village and eventually Saint Marys.
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