DJ Voices Hope He Will Return
By Mark McGrath
Hartford Courant
February 14, 1981

Fran Funk photo

WILLIMANTIC — The voice therapist hit a chord on the piano.  In her cool, melodic voice she sang, “How are you?’

“How are you?” sang back the young man in a weak, raspy voice.

Camille La Fratta struck another chord. “Where are you?” she sang.  Her voice was pretty, singsong.

“Where are you?” echoed Wayne Norman in rough imitation.  “Where are you?” he chirped.

Norman, the morning disc jockey on radio station WILI, was learning to talk again.

Except for one morning–January 5–“Wano” (pronounced Wayno) Norman has been “grounded” from the air since December 18, the day his voice became extremely hoarse.  It was “just brutal,” as Norman describes it.  He saw several doctors, but no one, he said, really could help him; one doctor warned that his vocal cords might be permanently damaged.

“It’s frustrating,” said Norman, “not being able to run my life the way I had been doing it.”

It’s “like a pianist losing his fingers,” he said.  Although he had feared he might have to change careers, and go into something such as sportswriting, Norman said he is more relieved now, because he believes that, through voice therapy, he will recover and keep his voice.

“I really want to get back on the air.  I’m chomping at the bit.  My job here is doing the morning show; that’s what I’ve been doing for nine years,” he said.

To rest his weak voice, Norman was advised by doctors to stop talking.  While vacationing at his parents’ home in California, and while performing off-air duties at WILI, he carried around note pads, and he would scratch out notes to communicate.

“There I was with my parents, who I hadn’t seen in over a year, and I had to sit down and write them notes–which I could have done from here.” he said.

Besides being a popular DJ, Norman also does a great deal of sports-related work.  It’s not rare for him to drive his sports car to Boston for a Red Sox night game, grab a locker room interview with a player, and then be back at work for his 5:30 to 9:30 a.m. show.

The week before his voice became hoarse, Norman was extremely busy.  Besides his morning show and his “Friday Night Oldies Show,” he was a public address announcer for a number of basketball games at Eastern Connecticut State College.  He suspects that it was all this work that contributed to his losing his normal voice.

Norman said none of the doctors could tell him definitely what caused his problem.  But he said he now believes his vocal cords became strained from “not speaking properly,” a problem that became aggravated by a busier-than-usual schedule.

For the 32-year old Norman, the timing was cruelly ironic.  A longtime follower of the University of Connecticut basketball team, Norman had just been hired to be the “color analyst” on the Connecticut Radio Network’s statewide coverage of UConn basketball.

But in a January 19 letter to network president Barry Berman, Norman had to write, “At this point, my entire broadcast career is on the line….My voice is still weak and below air quality, and I don’t know when I’ll be back on the air.  Seven doctors from as far away as Boston and California have been of little help.  There is no doubt in my mind that one game with the intensity of last week’s Boston College or St. John’s broadcasts would knock out whatever voice I have indefinitely.”

When it had appeared Norman would land this UConn job, he had received a present of a new tape cassette, to help him do interviews.  Now he uses the cassette to play back the words of his voice therapist, to aid him in his prescribed breathing and voice exercises.

Sitting in a room at the radio studio, Norman performed the exercises as he replayed his fourth session with his voice therapist, who advises him on everything from his posture, to using his diaphram to breathe, to pronouncing sentences in a singsong way to vary his voice pitch and ease the strain on his vocal cords.

“Psyche yourself,” urged the soft female voice on the tape recording.  “Speak as though you’re about ready to break into a song….You’re going to be on the air before you know it.”

La Fratta’s enthusiasm is catching, said Norman, who said that being on the air the first week of March now has become a challenge for him. [Ed. note: Wayne’s first day back on air was March 5, 1981, but only for one hour–he did his first full four-hour airshift on April 21, 1981.]

As the tape of the session with La Fratta concluded, the tape suddenly sputtered out a replay of a Connecticut Radio Network broadcast of a UConn game earlier this season.  The announcers were heard shouting above the courtside tumult.

For the moment, Norman didn’t seem to mind that his voice wasn’t also on this second part of the tape.

By losing his broadcasting voice, however, Norman has learned some things that may be more important.

He said the support from his radio station, which has kept him on in off-the-air capacities until his return to the air, has built his confidence.

He also has learned that when he was broadcasting all those mornings, he was not just speaking into the studio microphone.

Norman pointed to a pile of cards on his desk, simple short notes from listeners who missed him and hoped he would be back on the air soon.  What was particularly gratifying, he said, was that he had never met many of these people before.

But Norman’s radio audience made it clear they missed his helping them start their days.

They missed his warning about ice on car windshields and his suggestions as to how warmly to dress.  They miss his comic routines with meteorologist Norm MacDonald, and his almost daily editorial responses to Howard Cosell’s morning comments about sports.  But most of all, many of them miss that familiar sound that Wano also misses.

The sound of his voice, on the air.

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To read a Willimantic Chronicle story on Wayne’s recovery, click here.
To read a Norwich Bulletin story on Wayne’s recovery, click here.