Voices great and small

Ted Williams, a 53-year-old homeless American, whose involvement in drugs and alcohol has rendered him homeless for a decade, will soon be homeless no more. The golden-voiced former radio announcer has been rediscovered and the job offers are pouring in.

 Williams was filmed using his golden radio announcer voice to beg for subsistence money and the video clip was posted on YouTube. The video became one of the first so-called viral clips on the Internet.

 To those who have not yet seen the video — I saw him on CNN — you better search for it on YouTube. The guy, or at least his voice, is truly amazing. So amazing in fact that among the job offers were to do voice-overs for the Cleveland Cavaliers and food giant Kraft.

 Aside from that, people drawn by his incredible story have moved mountains to look for his 90-plus mother and reunited them, with Williams playing his new-found superstar status to the hilt by playing the repentant prodigal son crying on his mother’s chest before global television.

 The story of Williams is the story of a gift, a gift of voice. Once you hear him, you will be convinced that his is a voice you simply cannot turn down or ignore. He may have been a drug addict and an alcoholic, but you do not think of that when he starts talking.

 It is a voice that can command attention, perfect for doing voice-overs where listeners do not care about who is doing the talking, which is why the job offers are pouring in. With a voice like his, Williams can sell anything, like forgetting who and what he had been.

 I have known people who have made a career out of their voices, becoming millionaires in the process. Actor James Earl Jones is one. He is perhaps more famous for his voice than for his acting. His voice characterization roles are becoming almost as numerous as his films.

 Other people also became famous for their voices, no so much because of tonal quality, but because of their uniqueness. Mike Enriquez of GMA-7 is one such example. Mike delivers the news in a way that grabs your attention even if, to many people, in an irritating way.

 Aside from a dark past, Williams also has looks that won’t qualify him for a television commercial endorsing baby food, or opening a bank account. But a voice like his behind the scenes is enough to make you drop to your knees if you hear it calling your name in an empty church.

 There are just people like that. Truly gifted. But his real gift is not just his golden voice but the second chance to use it again for better and more productive purposes. He blew his gift before but he has been handed it back again. He is not only gifted, he is lucky as well.

 As far as voice is concerned, I am not as gifted and as lucky as Williams. In case my readers want to know, I used to have a very bried stint with radio, early on in my journalistic career.

 The late Cerge Remonde, whose first death anniversary is next week, pried me from the first newspaper I worked for, the Visayan Herald, where he was managing editor. He took me and some other members of the staff, like Gabby Malagar, to join him at radio DYLA.

 But it did not take long for me to realize that I was not cut for radio. Unlike many people, I know what I have and what I don’t. And I simply do not have the voice people would want to listen.

 And nobody knew this more than the audio technician at DYLA at the time. It would take him and me many precious minutes of countless retakes for the voice clips I had to record for my news reports. In the six months that I stayed with DYLA, the technician aged considerably.

 I will never be the golden voice that Ted Williams is, but I thank God for the different gift He has given me, which is writing. God’s gifts, used for what He intended them to be, beget other treasures that make life beautiful and meaningful.

 Writing gave me my wife, through her Masscom internship at The FREEMAN, and through her my three beautiful daughters. I may not sound like Ted Williams, but in my home my voice is the voice around which the lives of the women in my life revolve.