| REGISTER TO WIN | |
 |
Singleton, 84, ran into that problem in 1978 when he tried to retire from the U.S. Postal Service. After a 33-year career as a letter carrier in the Armourdale district of Kansas City, Kan., he found he couldn’t leave the job because the postal service had no birth certificate on file for him.
These days, the need for meticulous record-keeping is more intense. Fortunately, for people who were born at home as Singleton was, there’s help.
Singleton started work when the nation was kinder and more trusting. He graduated from Sumner High in 1942, went to college a semester and joined the Navy during World War II.
“I had volunteered to go into the Marines, but they wouldn’t take me because of my color,” said Singleton, who is black.
Not everything was kinder. But he didn’t have to show a birth certificate to enlist in the service, get a driver’s license, get a Social Security card or get hired by the postal service.
“It was hard for him,” said Singleton’s 82-year-old sister, Dorothy S. Harvey of Lawrence. “He felt like all the rest of us had birth certificates, and he was the only one who didn’t have one. He had been married for years.
“He is my oldest brother. We went through school and everything else together. It never even crossed my mind that he didn’t have a birth certificate.”
Singleton said people of yesteryear knew he was one of his parents’ four children and was born Oct. 30, 1923, at 422 Greeley Ave. in Kansas City, Kan. He still sounded distressed that neither City Hall nor the courthouse had records of his birth.
“They told me my mother only had three children to live,” Singleton said. “She had seven altogether. They said she had the three to live, and of the three living, they didn’t have any record of me.”
Singleton’s 89-year-old sister, Marian S. Jackson of Los Angeles, said, “It seemed unusual in view of all the things he was involved in his childhood, and after he became an adult.”
Singleton said, “I got upset.” His entire existence had been wiped out, and he couldn’t get out of the post office to take another job that was waiting for him. He and Harvey went to Topeka to straighten things out.
“I’m thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ That poor fellow,” Mike Heideman, communications specialist with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said when I shared Singleton’s story with him. “He’s gone through life and then this happens to him.”
Singleton’s story was resolved with census data, Harvey said, and ended happily. But what about the many others who were born at home like him and in an era of relaxed record-keeping?
With today’s security requirements in which birth certificates are mandated, what do those folks do to get a new driver’s license, passport or replace a Social Security card that’s been lost or stolen?
It is why the state has people file a “Delayed Certificate of Birth” form, Heideman said. “It happens frequently enough that we do have a process in place to respond to it when it does come up,” he said.
Thank goodness for a self-correcting bureaucracy.
Lewis W. Diuguid is a member of The Star’s Editorial Board.
Join the discussion
Share your observations and experiences about news. Lively, open debate is the goal, but please refrain from personal attacks or comments that are racist, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. If you see an inappropriate comment, please click the "Report as violation" link to notify a KansasCity.com editor. Thanks for your feedback.