Voiceless Deejay Speaks to Legacy of Vietnam

Each Thursday night precisely at 8, one of the strangest radio shows in America fades in with an eerie mechanical hum and the heavy thump of military helicopter rotor blades.

For deejay Dan Lawrence, it is a flashback to his own painful past and a sign of what’s to come: a sampling of classic rock that’s somehow all about Vietnam, presented by a man who remains inalterably scarred by the war’s legacy.

Then the sound of the chopper blades fades, replaced by something equally jarring and mechanical--the staccato utterances of a man who may be the nation’s only voiceless deejay.

“It’s me, Digital Dan,” announces a disembodied drone, “the deejay with a chip.”

The 47-year-old Lawrence is a Vietnam veteran who in 1994 lost his ability to talk to Agent Orange-related cancer that the Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledges he contracted while serving as an Army helicopter engineer flying over Southeast Asia.

Three decades later, Lawrence still struggles with his war experiences. But now help comes via a pair of computer-assisted radio programs that have become therapy not only for Lawrence but for other Vietnam veterans along Humboldt County’s isolated North Coast.

Lawrence uses a digital voice synthesizer, a machine about the size and shape of a computer modem, and types his thoughts into a laptop keyboard. With the press of a button, his words are articulated in a monotone voice known as Perfect Paul.

But listeners at tiny KHUM-FM radio instantly recognize that the voice belongs to Digital Dan, the station’s most popular personality.

The disabled deejay hears from others who have lost the ability to talk. “They need to know that there is a way to speak,” he said. “They need to have hope and someone to identify with, someone to ask: ‘What the hell do I do now?’ ”

Lawrence’s arrival on the airwaves came almost by accident. A year after life-saving surgery in 1994 removed his teeth, tongue and vocal chords, he was working as a carpenter on a radio station remodeling project.

That’s when Leslie Fergusen, his future wife and a station employee, introduced him to co-owner Cliff Berkowitz, who was intrigued by this solitary man who communicated with short notes on a small pad of paper.

One day, with the help of Lawrence’s new voice synthesizer, Berkowitz indulged in his first real conversation with the mysterious carpenter. “He was passionate about music and his years in Vietnam,” he said. “More eloquent than many people with healthy voices.”

Then Berkowitz got an idea: He broadcast an interview with Lawrence about his Vietnam travails. The owner of the station with the slogan “Radio Without the Rules” then asked the carpenter to host his own show.

Said Lawrence: “I thought he was nuts for about 10 seconds. Then, without hesitation, I said ‘Yes.’ ”

Like many listeners, Berkowitz no longer hears the computerized croak. “Listen to Dan long enough and you don’t hear that mechanical thing anymore,” he said. “You don’t think you’re listening to a computer. It’s just Dan talking.”

Each Friday, Lawrence hosts “Frankly Zappa,” a two-hour treatment of the zany music of the deejay’s favorite artist. But it is on Thursday nights that he finds his core audience with the “DMZ-Digital Music Zone” show.

He starts each show with a commentary on topics ranging from foolhardy politicians to the VA and its treatment of veterans with Agent Orange-related diseases.

His music is mainly 1960s rock classics that include the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull and the Doors--songs he says he blasted on the 8-track player of his CH-47 helicopter.

He calls it “music for your memories” and will often describe his own personal connection to a tune, explaining “I used to listen to this one in the summer of 1970 while doing time in a bunker on the Cambodian border.”

But being a voiceless deejay has its frustrations. Sometimes, nightmare episodes occur, miscues Lawrence attributes to the “digital gremlins.” Like the time his voice device malfunctioned in the middle of his commentary. “It decided to drop my voice to a deep baritone and slow it down a notch,” he recalled.

A Disillusioned Homecoming

Lawrence had no choice but to let the altered voice keep rolling.

Will Scott of Ferndale listens out of sheer admiration. “You’d think a guy without a voice wouldn’t have the guts to do radio,” he said. “But Dan’s got guts.”

Lawrence returned home from Vietnam in 1972 disillusioned. He drifted through countless jobs and three marriages. He lived alone in the woods. He worked as a landscaper and as a lumber mill worker near Eureka, eventually becoming a master carpenter.

In 1984, he began building sets for the Ferndale Repertory Theater and discovered acting, playing everything from classic roles to an inmate in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Eight years later, while onstage, Lawrence experienced severe pains in his ear that signaled the cancer’s onset.

In the operating room prior to surgery, Lawrence used his last words to joke with his doctor. “Well,” he said, “it looks like I’ll never be a deejay.”

That’s where he was wrong.

His popular radio show inspires weekly letters, calls and e-mail, and Lawrence often gives inspirational talks to cancer patients.

He married Fergusen in 1996, saying “I do” in sign language. He takes college computer courses, unsure of how long he wants to continue in radio.

For now, Digital Dan goes on sharing his music and his memories.

And his listeners respond.

Like the Vietnam vet who told Lawrence he was one of his only contacts with the outside world. That, says Digital Dan, is proof of the awesome power of the human voice.

And his as well.