Airport Voices: Two Friends Who Help You Get Where You Want to Go

I know of a man who has an airport ministry. All day long he tells traveller’s that The End Is Near. You’d think that the authorities would silence him, but not only is he tolerated, he’s openly encouraged. In fact, airport officials around the world let him use their PA systems.

Of course, “The End” that Jack Fox is talking about isn’t the Second Coming. It’s a much more mundane finale. Close you’re eyes and imagine a voice saying, “Caution. The moving walkway is ending.” That’s him. Jack’s is the calm, helpful voice behind the announcements in hundreds of airports across the globe.

Why do I call it a ministry? Because Jack does. When he prepares for a recording session, he tells The Verge, “I picture someone standing on a moving sidewalk and I’m talking to that person with a friendly quality to my voice, so it won’t be so cold and sterile.” And then he adds, “My father was a minister, and I think of this as my airport ministry.”

Fox is not alone in his airport exhortations. His good friend, Carolyn Hopkins, has been lending her voice to announcements even longer than he has. Both work for Louisville’s Innovative Electronic Designs (IED), which supplies computerized paging systems for airports and other transit systems the world over. The Verge article describes them as “two cheerful, church-going retirees who also happen to be longtime buddies.”

Like Fox, Hopkins started in radio before joining IED, and like Fox, she was influenced in her career by a parent: “I got into it because my father had a magnificent, deep voice,” she tells the Bangor Daily News (she lives in Maine, now). “I loved to listen to it, so I liked doing that kind of thing. I would practice. I would create radio programs, with intros and segues. I did voices. It was a lot of fun.”

So that you can put faces with their voices, below is an interview of Fox on WHAS11 and a “CBS This Morning” story on Hopkins.

Now that I know who these two are, I’m going to appreciate their suggestions more the next time I’m thinking about parking in the unloading zone.

Jack Fox and Carolyn Hopkins: two of the best-known yet least recognized people in the world . . . kind of like this guy:

(Lesley Anderson, “The Speakers: How Two People Became the Voice of 110 Airports and the NYC Subway,” The Verge, July 18, 2013; Abigail Curtis, “From a Tiny Studio in Maine, Her Voice Is Heard around the World,” January 11, 2016)

[photo: “Faces in Dublin Airport,” by Giuseppe Milo, used under a Creative Commons license]