“I think it stinks,” says Albert Bigler, a 95-year-old man from Ennis, Texas, who is no longer able to legally drive his Ford pickup truck from home to church and back home, because DPS won’t renew his driver’s license in the absence of a birth certificate.
Bigler has been dealing with this problem since last summer, and he tells KSDK in an interview earlier this month that the way in which he’s being stripped of his identity is stupid, to say the least. Not only has he had a valid driver’s license for 65 years, but he even had a commercial license at one point.
And it’s not just the driver’s license that he’s being denied for the rather ridiculous reason that he can’t prove having been born. Bigler is afraid he will also be denied the right to vote or the possibility to renew his fishing license because, with the driver’s license, he loses a valid form of identification.
The problems started this summer, when Bigler went to DPS to get his license renewed. When he was there, he was asked to provide a birth certificate, which he doesn’t have because, 95 years ago, when he was born, homebirth was still popular and county authorities weren’t exactly particular about keeping records.
Bigler and his friends asked for records in all neighboring counties and, when they came up empty-handed, traveled to Austin to the Vital Statistics office of Texas Health and Human Services. They couldn’t find records of him either, but they gave him a packet of forms to fill out. He did it and provided them with the original Baptismal and Confirmation records, and proof that he served during WWII. He was told that there were no records of him ever been born, and that was that: he wasn’t given further instructions.
Now, Bigler is stuck. He needs to be able to legally drive his Ford pickup from home to church, where he does maintenance work on the lawns, and back home. And he needs his independence.
“I think I'm a pretty good driver,” Bigler tells the media outlet. “But, I'm nobody. I've been driving for 65 years. Maybe longer than that. I even had a commercial license when I was working for the railroad for 40 years. I think it stinks.”
“It's very important to me because it's just like taking everything away from me,” Bigler adds.
And it’s not just the driver’s license that he’s being denied for the rather ridiculous reason that he can’t prove having been born. Bigler is afraid he will also be denied the right to vote or the possibility to renew his fishing license because, with the driver’s license, he loses a valid form of identification.
The problems started this summer, when Bigler went to DPS to get his license renewed. When he was there, he was asked to provide a birth certificate, which he doesn’t have because, 95 years ago, when he was born, homebirth was still popular and county authorities weren’t exactly particular about keeping records.
Bigler and his friends asked for records in all neighboring counties and, when they came up empty-handed, traveled to Austin to the Vital Statistics office of Texas Health and Human Services. They couldn’t find records of him either, but they gave him a packet of forms to fill out. He did it and provided them with the original Baptismal and Confirmation records, and proof that he served during WWII. He was told that there were no records of him ever been born, and that was that: he wasn’t given further instructions.
Now, Bigler is stuck. He needs to be able to legally drive his Ford pickup from home to church, where he does maintenance work on the lawns, and back home. And he needs his independence.
“I think I'm a pretty good driver,” Bigler tells the media outlet. “But, I'm nobody. I've been driving for 65 years. Maybe longer than that. I even had a commercial license when I was working for the railroad for 40 years. I think it stinks.”
“It's very important to me because it's just like taking everything away from me,” Bigler adds.