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Highlands Today

Mistake Haunts Woman's Name 63 Years Later

Highlands Today photo by JASMINA MEYER

Jeraldean Smith, formerly Geraldean, never had trouble with confusion over her name until she tried to register for Social Security disability.

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By BRAD DICKERSON

Highlands Today

Published: February 13, 2009

SEBRING - The difference in the spelling of her name is only one letter, but it has sent Geraldean Smith - or now Jeraldean to officialdom - on a roller coaster ride she would rather avoid.

Smith was born June 2, 1945, and has always spelled her first name with a G.

Her driver's licenses, credit cards, her voter registration and her marriage certificate have all been spelled that way.

But Smith's Tennessee birth certificate, for some reason, has her first name starting with a J even though her late mother said it was supposed to have been spelled with a G.

The mix-up was not a huge concern for Smith until she tried to register for Social Security disability.

The error had been discovered earlier in 1988. Before then, Smith said she had never seen the piece of paper in question, since the original was destroyed in a fire.

"I asked them (the Social Security office) about it and they said, 'Just go on the way you've always spelt your name,'" she said. "That's on everything."

And she did until she went into Sebring's Division of Driver's Licenses - birth certificate in hand - to get a Florida license after moving to Highlands County from Tennessee in 2008.

"(They) said, 'We can't accept this. You spell your name with a G,'" Smith remembered.

Ann Nucatola, press secretary for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FDHSMV), said Thursday that when Real ID is implemented in January 2010, "the applicant will have to use the official spelling of her name as supported by legal documentation."

Real ID is a nationwide effort to improve the integrity and security of state-issued driver licenses and identification cards, according to information from the FDHSMV. This measure will, in turn, help in fighting terrorism and reducing fraud.

Situations such as Smith's are not common at Florida driver's license offices, Nucatola said.

In this particular instance, she said the director for the Division of Driver's Licenses will review the issue and determinate whether to allow the G versus the J.

Smith, however, has already taken her own measures.

Over the last three months, she has contacted everyone from Social Security to Medicaid offices about getting her cards changed so they reflect her "new" name, albeit one that only varies by a single letter.

She has also now successfully obtained the piece of plastic that started this personal windstorm - her Florida driver's license.

Several months of work to update her information with the new spelling of her name have been taxing on Smith, who already has to carry around an oxygen tank to assist with breathing.

"It's been affecting my breathing, it's been affecting my nerves," she said. "I bet I cried for three weeks, but it was just nerves."

Now, at 63, Smith is adjusting to a life in which her signature will never again be as it once was.

"It's just changed my life," she said. "After 63 years, it's just like I'm a different person now."

Highlands Today reporter Brad Dickerson can be reached at 863-386-5838 or bdickerson@highlandstoday.com

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