A Reckless Rescuer of Records

Christine Zywocki has spent twenty years archiving monument transaction and burial records stored in a building in West Toledo, Ohio.

The records, some written in a loopy cursive and others by typewriter, give more than just a name and date of birth and death. Many include biographical information, handwritten correspondence from the deceased’s family members, and details and whereabouts of headstones the family bought.

The now-abandoned Lloyd Bros. Walker Co. building was looted by thieves last winter, and may be demolished with some 20,000 records still inside.

Mrs. Zywocki succeeded in rescuing a few thousand records from the building’s basement in early March and deposited them for safekeeping in a Toledo-Lucas County Public Library warehouse.

Her efforts to remove more were thwarted by city code enforcement officials, who quickly boarded up the building’s entrances and threatened her with arrest for trespassing.

“We can’t just let anybody walk in there and take whatever they want,” said City Law Director John Madigan. [Link]

Yes, better that these records be destroyed than to have them fall into the hands of a genealogical vigilante.

Surprise, You're a Girl!

A young man from South Africa named Surprise Ndlovu was surprised to learn that his birth certificate says he is female. This means that he can't get his national identification documents and proceed with his studies—at least not without undergoing several rounds of expensive surgery.

"My life is doomed," he said on Wednesday, holding back tears.

"I wanted to become a social worker, but now it seems I can't even become a truck driver.

"How can I get a driver's licence without an ID book?" [Link]

Slow Enough FOIA?

Freedom of Information Act requests are the genealogist's not-so-secret weapon: a way to shake loose documents that otherwise would gather dust in government storehouses for eternity (think back to the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark). But with large increases in federal FOIA requests—and few incentives to expedite the process—the wait for documents has grown longer and longer. In the words of Charles Davis, head of the National FOI Coalition, "Federal FOIA is the water torture. It's just drip, drip, drip. You wait and you wait and you wait."

Many backlogs are lengthy. The most recent reports available from the 50 worst laggards show the median wait for a request to be handled ranges from about three months to more than four years, depending on the agency. The slowest federal agency is the National Archives, where officers explained most of their requests, pending for an average of 1,631 days, have to be reviewed by the originating agency for declassification before they can be released. [Link]

And if you're wondering how the Social Security Administration is doing processing your SS-5 request . . . keep wondering. The SSA was late turning in its FOIA report.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Just a Bit Behind Schedule. . .

From Irish Emigrant Online of Oct. 3, 2005:

C&AG's report highlights mismanagement

The annual report from the Comptroller and Auditor General has, as usual, highlighted a number of areas of financial mismanagement resulting in a waste of taxpayer's money. Among the issues raised were:

[snip]

• A genealogy project that was supposed to result in most church records of births, marriages and deaths being entered on a computer data base by next year is running behind schedule. The C&AG reports that it will be a further 20 to 25 years before it is complete.
  

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Strangely, They Spelled 'Tarczewski' Correctly

From NorthJersey.com:

No license for errors when dealing with MVC

Friday, September 23, 2005

By JOHN CICHOWSKI
THE ROAD WARRIOR

If you have a name like Tarczewski, chances are good that some bureaucracy will misspell it and drive you crazy for weeks while you try to figure out why your rebate check is late or why you can't log on to your new e-mail account.

This is the burden Gary Tarczewski has carried for 47 years.

"I'm used to it," said Gary.

Still, the Bergenfield machinist wasn't prepared for the news he received from the state Motor Vehicle Commission when he tried to renew his driver's license under New Jersey's new, ultra-secure digital licensing system. You see, Gary's name was misspelled on his birth certificate.

[snip]

Gary knew this, of course. Although Tarczewski was spelled exactly as his mom and dad had intended, his first name had grown an appendage:

G-A-R-R-Y.

"Nobody ever made a big deal out of it before," Gary insisted. "Even when I got married; even when I got my first New Jersey license."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Cause of Death: Bureaucracy

From The (Surry Hills, NSW, Australia) Daily Telegraph:

Immigration blamed for elderly woman's death

August 24, 2005

IMMIGRATION officials are facing possible legal action after being accused of contributing to the death of an elderly Syrian woman seeking to extend a visitor visa due to ill health.

Melbourne GP Dr Chris Towie said 79-year-old Azize Agha died of a heart attack on August 10, two days after being forced by officials to travel 30 minutes into the city for a medical examination.

He said he had written to the department, warning it Ms Agha was unfit to travel.

"And so I wrote on her death certificate that the cause of her heart attack was being harassed by the department of immigration," he said.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]