In December, Norman’s voice–his bread and butter since his college days in the late 60’s–failed him.  After a week or so of an increasingly severe sore throat, Norman was unable to go on the air December 18 for his familiar morning show.

Although it was his first unscheduled absence from the show since 1973, Norman was not unduly alarmed.  He left the same day for a vacation in California to spend Christmas with his family.

When, after two weeks with his family, his voice didn’t return, Norman began to worry.  He called a doctor in Willimantic, and was told not to talk.

The nightmare didn’t start however, until he returned to Willimantic after the holidays and when he went back to work January 5, he found his voice just wasn’t up to it.

“It started again,” Norman said of what proved to be his only time on the air since December 18.  “There were no real symptoms. It just sounded bad.”

After several visits to local doctors, who found nothing wrong with his throat — “your vocal cords look remarkably normal,” he was repeatedly told — Norman was genuinely frightened.  He has worked for WILI for almost 11 years, and those who know him say radio is his life, so the prospect of chronic throat illness was terrifying indeed.

“I started thinking about other professions,” he recalls.  “I thought I could become a sportswriter.  I can write pretty well, and I’ve covered sports for the radio for years.”

“This couldn’t have come at a worse time, though.  I’m buying a house, and all I could think of is losing my job and having my financial base knocked out from under me.”

The doctors in Willimantic referred Norman to the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass, outside of Boston.  Norman found little comfort, however, when the experts at the clinic echoed the other doctors’ pronouncements about his “remarkably normal” vocal cords.

With his future in broadcasting uncertain, Norman was forced to turn down a prestigious job as the analyst for University of Connecticut basketball broadcasts on the Connecticut Radio Network.

“This would have been picked up by nine stations,” he said.  “That would have meant exposure in Hartford, New Haven, Fairfield County.  But I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to keep my job here.”

The picture brightened quickly, though, when he was referred by the doctors at the Lahey Clinic to a voice therapist in Longmeadow, Mass.

Norman theorizes, based on the doctors’ diagnoses and his own assumptions, that his vocal cords have been strained by overuse and talking improperly.  With the therapist, Norman is now learning to talk all over again, using different ranges of his voice, and breathing differetly as he talks to strain his voice less.

“I’ve never had voice training,” Norman said.  “Very few people in the broadcast business have.”

He goes through voice drills with the therapist, pronouncing syllables like “hah,” and simple phrases like “How are you?” over and over, in a breathy, sing-song way, varying the pitch and tone.

Norman is optimistic now.  The therapist will not give him any guarantees, or even educated guesses, about when he will go back on the air, but she says he can come back, and with his voice stronger than ever if he learns to use it properly.

There’s a lot Norman doesn’t understand about what happened to his voice, or even what he’s doing to correct the problem, but he feels good, both physically and psychologically, after three weeks of therapy.

“Here I thought Lahey was going to be the Godsend, but it wasn’t until after this (the therapy sessions) that I began to feel good,” he said. “Maybe it’s just the positive reinforcement, but my whole outlook has changed in the last three weeks since I’ve been seeing her.”

As the therapist explained it, Norman must learn to talk in a way that treats his vocal cords gently.  Partly it’s a matter of using the diaphram when he talks, and improving his posture.

She has explained that a more melodic manner of speaking strains the vocal cords less.  When singing, a person moves gently from one word to the next, without “clapping” the vocal cords together.  When speaking in the normal fashion, on the other hand, the periods and commas force the vocal cords together.

While he learns to talk, and strengthens his voice in the process, Norman is still putting in a 40-50 hour week at the radio station.  He writes commercials, mans the studio during the hours when he is not required to go on the air, and works out scheduling problems — which occur frequently while he is off the air — with the station management.

The many cards and letters he has received from people who miss his familiar morning banter with the weathermen or his cheerful comments on the state of the world give him incentive to return.