“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
That is what Mark Twain wrote in a cablegram he sent from Europe to a newspaper publisher in the United States that had published an obituary with false details of his death in a widely circulated newspaper one day more than a hundred years ago.
I am saying the same thing right now in the year 2024!
Yeah, I got a report from a fellow attorney with whom I worked with in Philadelphia – Scott Rudolf – asking me on my Facebook page if I was OK. I told him yes and then, after obtaining my phone number, he messaged me that the Disciplinary Board of Pennsylvania had reported that I was “deceased.”
The Board keeps track of all attorneys and “helps to regulate attorney conduct, protect the public, and maintain the integrity of the legal profession.” (Good luck with that last one!)
I never knew it, but it also keeps track of inactive and retired attorneys and whether they have passed away. I did not pass away. I was an inactive attorney and then a retired one, but one that was still kicking.
It seems the SNAFU started some two years ago when I signed up with an on-line group called “Ever Loved.” It offered suggestions on writing your obit as well as the choice of photographs and documents you would want you next of kin to use at you memorial service. It suggested I upload the information to secure it for years to come.
I wrote an obit that included my singing with a Doo Wop group and then being drafted, serving in the Vietnam War, writing as a newspaper reporter and then a union organizer. It also mentioned the two exquisite wives that had to put up with my shenanigans over the years we had been together.
That obit somehow made its way to the Disciplinary Board which used it as so-called proof of my death.
I got it all straightened out after having to contact the Board. They required at least two cards with your mugshot on them, I guess to prove it is really you. The death notice died out soon after that. (Joke intended!)
Now I feel more alive having dealt with my own mini-resurrection. “He’s alive,” said the creator of the scariest monster I ever saw in my lifetime. “He’s alive” can now refer to me.