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Why can’t I find my grandfather in the Social Security Death Index?

November 16th, 2011 7 comments

Hi, I have many details about my grandfather but I can’t find him in any sort of records at all. His name was Charles Michael "Skippy" Hopper Jr. He was born on April 26, 1951 Bronx, NYC and he died on June 20, 1980 in New York. He was in the U.S. Army after Vietnam and trained at Fort Dix. He was stationed in Germany in the mid 1970s’. His younger siblings were Robert Hopper and Marion Hopper (Dovico). I have records on both of his parents, Charles Hopper 1925-1987 and Marion Cerone (Serone or Ceroni) 1928- He married my grandmother Linda Fuchs on July 4, 1970. My mom (their only child) was later adopted and she never knew her dad. He was also an award winning runner. He committed suicide on June 20th 1980. I can’t find any thing on him. Can someone please help?

The SSDI can be incomplete. In general people are always in it if they received a SS benefit. Since your grandfather was young he may not have every received a benefit and his death cert may not have been forwarded and attached properly. If his wife didn’t claim a death benefit I wouldn’t automatically expect him to be in it. If no benefit was ever collected they may or may not be in it. Also, it’s an index compiled by private companies based on information they receive from the SS office and not compiled by the SS office, so there’s room for human error in transcribing the data.

If you know where he died, ordering his death certificate from the jurisdiction is your surest way to get the information you want. It will be in both a state and county agency, usually with vital statistics, health, or registrar in the name. The cert will cost around $12-25.

Add: New York state doesn’t keep certs for the 5 burroughs, so if he died in the Bronx go here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/vr/vrbappl.shtml