What's It Like To Hear The Voice Of A Loved One You Lost Long Ago
A perfect Feel Good Friday story to warm your heart and restore your faith in goodness of people.
By Sadho Ram — 30 Jan 2015, 03:44 PM — Updated almost 10 years ago
A man who was saving an outgoing voicemail of his late wife following her death in 2003, thought he lost the voicemail when technical work carried out by Virgin Media caused it to be deleted
Stan Beaton, the man who had kept a voicemail from his late wife for 14 years.
Image via BBC Radio LeedsThe voicemail was recorded by Ruby, Stan Beaton's wife, to serve as the message people would hear when they called his phone
The 68-year-old told BBC Radio Leeds: "I've always resisted changing companies because whenever I mentioned that my wife's voice was our voicemail message and would it be retained and each company said no, so that's why I never changed.
"Sadly it disappeared. I was absolutely devastated by it, but also extremely angry.
"In the early days [I listened to it] quite often. Basically it came to the point when if I felt low then I would listen to it.
"In December I learned that it had disappeared. I just could not tell people how it affected me at that time. It really did devastate me."
Then, having heard his story, a team of 11 engineers decided to recover the deleted voicemail. And much to the 68-year-old's delight, they managed to restore it after spending 3 days on it.
Rob Evans, executive director of engineering at Virgin Media, said finding it "was like searching for a needle in a haystack", however a team of 11 engineers spent three days tracking it down.
"The chances of its recovery were slim" he said, but the missing file containing Ruby's voice was found on Friday. The next morning we called Stan to deliver the good news," he said.
Upon listening to his late wife's message after it was recovered, Beaton said: "It's just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever. I'm staggered at the lengths they have gone to."
Virgin Media is sending Beaton a CD of the recording and the retired forklift truck driver plans on thanking whoever delivers it in style. “I’ve got a nice bottle of Glenfiddich with their name on it,” he told the Huddersfield Examiner. Following the incident, Virgin pledged to make a series of donations to charities of Beaton’s choice as an apology.
buzzfeed.com
