Voiceless man learns to sing

After losing his larynx and windpipe to cancer, Herman Schulenberg created a new windpipe for himself by ramming a white-hot ice pick through his flesh. Then he learned to sing through this opening by "closing the windpipe's artificial opening with his index finger and manipulating his neck with his other fingers" in order to "direct the air through the passage in such manner as to get a variety of tones."

Finally, he gave a singing performance before a group of 50 doctors at a meeting of the Milwaukee Oto-Ophthalmic Society. That would have been a strange concert to attend. From the San Antonio Express - March 3, 1935.