Carl Kasell, Longtime Voice Of NPR, Also Left Great Voice Mails After His Passing

NPR's Carl Kasell (on piano) was a serious journalist, and a
boffo quiz show judge and voice mail provider 

Carl Kasell, the longtime news reader for NPR, died last week at the age of 84.

Upon his retirement from NPR, he got a stint as the funny scorekeeper, judge and prize provider for "Wait Wait....Don't Tell Me!" the humorous NPR news quiz show.  

As Morning Edition anchor before his retirement, Kasell was super serious, but "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" was his chance to be the comedian for once.

According to NPR:

"Host Peter Sagal says no one could have guessed that Kasell would be so funny. 'The greatest thing about Carl was anything we came up with, he was game,' Sagal says. 'When we were in Las Vegas, we had him come onstage in a showgirl's headdress. No matter what we asked him to do - silly voices, or weird stunts; we had him jump out of a cake once to make his entrance onstage - he did it (with) such joy and dignity."

 "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me," didn't have a budget for prizes to be given to winning contestants, so Kasell just did voice mails for the winners. They were terrific.

Click this link for some examples.

A Love Story: Phone Company Deletes Cherished Voicemail, But Technicians Get It Back.

Stan Beaton reacts when hearing his late wife's voice again.
A voice mail recording she made before her death was
deleted, but technicians eventually recovered it.  

Stan Beaton's wife died in 2003.

It comforted him a little that he kept his wife's voice on the home voice mail.

But recently, technical work by his telecom firm, Virgin Media, deleted the voice mail, and it was thought that it was permanetly deleted.

Beaton, 68, of Mirfield, West Yorkshire, England, was devastated by the loss of that snippet of his wife's voice, the BBC reports. He was initially told the voice was "lost forever."

"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......I just could not tell people how it affected me at that time. It really did devastate me."

But technicians at Virgin Media began to poke and prod and do all that alchemy with computer systems that tech geeks do, and got the voice mail with Beaton's wife back.

Given how a lot of big telecom companies aren't exactly awesome at customer service these days, you have to appreciate Virgin Media's efforts.  After all, the chances of getting that voice mail back were slim.

Here's what Rob Evans, executive director of engineering at Virgin Media said:

"It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, however, a team of 11 engineers spent three days tracking it down."

Here's a nice video of Beaton with the newly recovered voice mail message. What his late wife says is as mundane as possible, but given the importance to Beaton, also incredibly profound.


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