The following teaser is from an article printed in the July 8, 2011 edition of tcpalm.com:
FORT PIERCE — James Kelly knows exactly how Mark Twain felt when the great American writer quipped, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
The 49-year-old Kelly, who’s very much alive and kicking in Fort Pierce, was declared dead Oct. 15, 1981.
The federal agency each month falsely reports that nearly 1,200 living Americans have died, according to Scripps Howard News Service research. These clerical errors, can be found in a database ominously titled the “Death Master File,” which includes 24 Treasure Coast residents.
Kelly said his reported death date actually was the day his father died: “And his name was James Kelly, too.”
Many of the “Death Master File” errors involve sons mistakenly listed for their deceased fathers or spouses mistakenly listed when a husband or wife dies.
Kelly said he was checking his annual Social Security benefits statement — the letter that tells you what you’d get if you retired at 62, 66 or 70 — when “I noticed they listed my contributions for the past four years as zero, but I had been working and contributing to the system all that time. I contacted the Social Security office, and that’s when I found out I had been declared dead.”
