Louise Wicker Long ID crisis--- Post 9-11

Every thing went fine with Mom's identification until 9-11. With the Homeland Security Act, a person needed more than just an affadavit from her mother and an inaccurate birth certificate. Mother started worrying about how she was going to re-new her driver's license which didn't match the name or birth date on her birth certificate. So, she decided to hire a lawyer to correct her birth certificate. She got new documents in addition to the ones she had had. She now had documents from cousins to add to her portfolio of proving who she was. Notice she had her name listed as "Louise Alice".

Her cousin Verna McCaleb was 93 and had had a similar problem (her mother was Mary Ann Williams b.Oct 1891 Tennessee, one of the James B Williams kids---so, I think Verna was really my grandfather's first cousin).Verna says "It took me almost a year getting mine corrected. . .what I hated most I had to go to court and pay a lawyer to prove I was living. Silly, but I had to do it. The Dr. and My Dad both must have been drunk. "
Undoubtedly they had the same doctor---there weren't that many in the bootheel of Missouri in the early 1900's. When I saw the name, I laughed. So, mine isn't the only family that has a long history of substance abuse. And, yes, that's the same Limbaugh family---probably a great uncle of Rush.
Mom thought she was finally going to have it all settled after 80 years of inaccuracy when. . . the lawyer died. You would have thought he did it to spite her. She fretted that she would not be able to re-new her driver's license---there were lots of stories of people being denied because the license information didn't match the birth certificates. As I was re-newing mine, I noticed that she could get a passport with the documents she had. So, we got her a passport which matched perfectly with her driver's license and she was able to re-new her driver's license. It was cheaper than hiring another lawyer (that she was afraid would die). I think by this time she had thought getting an accurate birth certificate was jinxed---maybe she was right, but we got around it.