Widower breaks down after voicemail left by his wife 14 years ago is recovered

Stan Beaton was left devastated after a voicemail left by his late wife was deleted 14 years after she had recorded it.

Widower breaks down after voicemail left by his wife 14 years ago is recovered

Stan Beaton was left devastated after a voicemail left by his late wife was deleted 14 years after she had recorded it.

Stan had kept the outgoing message recorded by his wife Ruby, following her death in 2003 and would listen to it when he felt down. Last December, the message was deleted following upgrades by Virgin Media.

The 68-year-old told BBC Radio Leeds: “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.

“Sadly it disappeared. I was absolutely devastated by it, but also extremely angry.

“In the early days [I listened to it] quite often. Basically, it came to the point when if I felt low then I would listen to it.

“In December I learned that it had disappeared. I just could not tell people how it affected me at that time. It really did devastate me.”

After hearing Beaton's story, a team of 11 engineers set out to find the lost voicemail, a task Rob Evans, executive director of engineering at Virgin Media, told the BBC was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

“The chances of its recovery were slim,” he said.

But, after three days of searching, they managed to find the voicemail last Friday.

Here's Beaton listening to the voicemail he thought was lost for ever.

There aren't enough tissues in the world.

“It’s just a wonderful, wonderful sound that I thought was lost forever," said Beaton.

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