Man Who Lost His Voice to Cancer Becomes Digital Disc Jockey

He lost his vocal cords, his tongue, his teeth, muscles from his chest and an abundance of lymph nodes.

With them went a great slice of Dan Lawrence’s soul and much of his identity. Cancer killed his voice and his acting career.

Now he is a disc jockey.

In 1995, after surgeons gutted his throat and mouth, Lawrence was helping to remodel radio station KHUM-FM in Ferndale, a Northern California dairy town where cows outnumber people.

It was just a side job, something suggested by then-fiancee Leslie Fergusen to get him out of the house and help lift his depression.

The station had new owners, and Lawrence had a new toy--a digital synthesizer connected to his laptop. It transformed his typing into a robotic voice not unlike that of Hal, the supercomputer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

So co-owner Cliff Berkowitz taped an interview.

Lawrence told of his soldiering in Vietnam, his exposure to Agent Orange, his belief that the blistering defoliant caused his cancer. He did so with such wit and passion that Berkowitz played the tape on the air.

“I asked listeners if they thought they could listen to a voice that was mechanical,” Berkowitz said.

The phones rang for 30 minutes. One woman called dripping wet, having jumped out of the tub.

“It surprised the hell out of me,” Berkowitz said. “Just average people saying: ‘This is great. You’ve got to do it.’ ”

So Lawrence, 46, became Digital Dan, the only known DJ in America without a voice.

He broadcasts music and commentary to a mix of small-city people, reclusive cabin dwellers, farmers and ranchers.

There are about 130,000 people in Humboldt County. Not all of them like Lawrence’s choice of music, which leans toward classic rock, or his iconoclastic opinions.

“But they listen because they respect what he’s doing. Everybody in town knows him,” says Jerry Lema, who owns the only gas station in the five blocks of downtown.

Ralph Miller owns the wood stove store around the corner.

“I like listening to him be a muckraker,” says Miller, whose 15-year-old son also is a fan. “He takes them all on. Listen, he has no voice. It was either do this or die. He found something to do.”

Miller buys advertising on Lawrence’s shows. “I sell to hippies in the woods,” Miller says. “Half the population’s out there, living two hours down a dirt road.

“There’s a lot of them ol’ veterans out there too,” Miller said. “The vets really go for Dan.”

Lawrence’s commentaries defy categorization. One night it was sheep in spandex; specifically, sheep wearing neon spandex during county fair judging breaks. (It keeps their fleece clean.)

Another night it was the national outcry over Humboldt County authorities swabbing pepper spray into the eyes of environmental protesters to get them to quit.

The demonstrators deserved it, Lawrence said on the air. “They were given every opportunity to leave.”

Jacqueline Debets, the station’s chief financial officer, said she has gotten a few complaints. Other callers thought Lawrence’s voice was “some kind of gimmick,” she said.

“We get a lot of reaction,” she said. “But it’s mostly positive. He doesn’t complain. He never says anything about himself. I think a lot of people respect that.

“But he does rail about injustice and hypocrisy and the government.”

The 100,000-watt station, too small to make the ratings, calls itself “Radio Without the Rules” and has survived since January 1996 in a crowded market of 11 competitors.

Lawrence has two shows. On Thursday nights he hosts the “DMZ”--for Digital Music Zone--a two-hour program that opens with the thump of rotor blades and brief commentary. The rest is music, much of it what he once blasted on the eight-track player of his CH-47 helicopter. As an Army flight engineer, his favorite album to wage war by was Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung.”

On Fridays, he oversees “Frankly Zappa,” two hours beginning at 10 p.m. of nothing but the late great musician himself. Lawrence has 1,194 selections.

Lawrence graciously tolerates media curiosity. He says he doesn’t want another job, has no plans to leave Ferndale and really doesn’t understand all the attention.

“I guess it’s like a blind race car driver,” he tapped into his computer during an interview at his modest home.

Lawrence is tall, thin and balding, with a big mustache. He was born and reared in this area, served four years in the Army and 16 in the National Guard. After Vietnam, he lived alone for a year in the woods, where “no one called me ‘baby-raping murderer,’ ” he said. “That happened at the San Francisco airport when I came home.”

Of his cancer, he says: “It’s easier to live with than some of the things I’ve seen in this world.”

Such as?

“The look on the face of the first man I killed.”

Out of bullets, during a night attack in a foxhole near the Cambodian border, Lawrence choked an enemy soldier to death.

Here, at least, “nobody is shooting at me,” he says.

In 1994, Lawrence had an earache. The pain worsened. “Sometimes it would literally knock me to my knees,” he said.

Doctors took four months to find the tumor. Six weeks of massive radiation killed it, but not the cancer. In April 1995 came surgery.

His throat can no longer handle food, so he lives on a liquid diet.

Last year, doctors found cancer in his right lung. They took most of that too. The cancer is in remission. He is checked every six months.

There are things he misses. Food. Conversation.

Lawrence tried a device known as an electrolarynx, which produces sound when held to the neck. “But they took so much of my tongue, I can’t form words.”

Then, at a trade show, he saw a DECtalk speech synthesizer, made by Digital Equipment Corp. “This was my last option.”

Talking to Lawrence entails long, silent stretches. A question is asked. He ponders it, then types his answer. When he’s done, the synthesizer unleashes a disembodied monotone.

“It’s harder on others than it is on me,” Lawrence says.

He and Leslie Fergusen, 54, were married last year. They’ve been together since 1991.

“She stood by me through all of this,” he says.

She, too, misses things.

“Not being able to hear him say, ‘I love you.’ ” Making dinner together. “That’s where I would tell him about my day and he’d tell me about his.”

The radio show, both say, is one good thing from Lawrence’s ordeal.

“He loves doing it,” Fergusen said.

Hearing from other veterans, some of them still troubled, means a great deal to him.

“He’s not quite back from Vietnam yet,” Lawrence scribbled on a note pad after one veteran called the request line.

These men comfort him.

“It’s nice to know I’m not alone.”