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Widower breaks down hearing lost voice mail from late wife
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It was just a simple recording -- the outgoing message he and his wife, Ruby, had set for their phone, but it was her voice, and he couldn't bear to let it go. Stan Beaton had kept the recording since his wife's death in 2003, even avoiding changing phone companies to ensure the message's survival.
"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," he told "BBC News."
According to "BBC News," the sound of his wife's voice was a buoy whenever he was having a tough day.
"In the early days [I listened to it] quite often," he told the British news network. "Basically it came to the point when if I felt low then I would listen to it."
But, then one day it disappeared. This past December, some technical changes at his phone company caused the message to be deleted. Beaton was heartbroken.
"I was absolutely devastated by it, but also extremely angry," Beaton told "BBC News."
Beaton immediately contacted the company hoping there was a way to get the message back.
"BBC" reported that the UK-based phone company knew finding the voicemail would be "like searching for a needle in a haystack," but they put 11 engineers on it. And after three days, they miraculously tracked it down.
Camera crews were on site to catch Beaton's emotional reaction to hearing the message again. He was visibly moved.
"It's just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever," he told the "BBC." "They've made this old age pensioner extremely happy."
See his emotional reaction here.
