Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 9, 1994 TAG: 9409090071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Occasionally, Gary Lee Zimmerman has been dead tired, dead set or at a dead end.
On Wednesday, the federal government told him he was just plain dead. That left the 51-year-old Salem resident dead set on proving he isn't.
By Thursday, bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration conceded they were dead wrong, Zimmerman was dead right, and he's alive after all.
The experience has provided comic relief to the former General Electric worker, who's been collecting disability checks since a heart condition forced him to take early retirement in 1991.
``I love it. I think it's hilarious,'' Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman learned of his ``demise'' after what he first thought was a mistake by another federal agency, the Postal Service. His disability check didn't come in the mail Tuesday, as he expected.
``It was a holiday weekend, so I didn't think anything about it. I just thought the mail had been delayed,'' he said.
When the check didn't arrive Wednesday, Zimmerman called the Salem Post Office. A worker there told him other benefit checks had been delivered on time, and suggested that Zimmerman call the Social Security Administration's office in Roanoke.
That's when he got the bad news.
``The lady asked me two questions - my date of birth and something else, I can't remember what. Then she told me the records showed I died on Aug. 15,'' he said.
Now, being declared dead by the federal government raises interesting possibilities, such as: Can you quit paying taxes? Forget about bills? Cash in on your life insurance? Or, gosh, even attend your own funeral?
Zimmerman pondered those, but decided this was one dispute in which he wouldn't roll over and play dead.
Still, he was surprised at the hoops he had to jump through to prove he's not a corpse.
He couldn't simply waltz into the Poff Federal Building on Franklin Road and challenge Social Security workers to feel his pulse. As it does for nearly everything else, the federal government has manuals and procedures for proving one's existence.
``I asked her, what do I have to do? She said, `You have to go to a doctor and get verification that you're alive.' Plus, I had to bring my birth certificate and driver's license down there,'' he said.
So, he went to his physician, Dr. Victor H. Bell at Lewis-Gale Clinic. The bemused doctor took Zimmerman's temperature and blood pressure, then reached his conclusions, which he wrote on a blank prescription form.
``Above named patient seen and evaluated 9/7/94. He is indeed alive,'' Bell wrote. He didn't charge Zimmerman for the visit.
Zimmerman took the note and his identification to the Social Security office Thursday morning. Workers there apologized, and said they'd correct the glitch that killed him in their records.
Zimmerman said he still can't understand what led Social Security to believe he'd died.
Barbara Calnan, operations supervisor at Social Security's Roanoke office, said she doesn't know either.
``It's very rare when this happens, but unfortunately, it does on occasion happen,'' she said.
The highly computerized agency regularly connects with computers at the Postal Service, Medicare, the state Department of Health and other offices to update its records. It's possible that another agency reported Zimmerman as deceased and Social Security picked it up when the computers were electronically talking to each other, Calnan said.
But Social Security workers were unable to pinpoint where the information came from.
``In this case it's a mystery,'' Calnan said.
She also didn't know why Zimmerman was told he needed a physician's note. It's not one of the items listed as proof of existence in the administration's ``Instructions for Erroneous Death Terminations,'' she said.
In any event, the records have been corrected. The correction will be sent to the Social Security Payment Center in Birmingham, Ala. Someday soon he'll get his disability payment. Maybe.
After all, the check is in the mail.
by CNB