By: Danny Freedman, Associated Press Writer (AP) Nearly two months after anthrax anxiety caused the Pentagon to suspend "Dear Abby's" annual campaign for letters to the nation's troops, the columnist is re-enlisting in the war effort.
The military announced Thursday that her decades-old drive to get holiday letters to the men and women of the armed services will be continued -- assuredly anthrax free -- on OperationDearAbby.net.
The Navy-powered Web site -- created in late November, a month after both "Dear Abby" and the military's own mail initiatives were blocked -- will transmit messages from the homefront "to a ship at sea, a submarine beneath the sea, and even a cave in Afghanistan," said Jeanne Phillips, the person behind pen name Abigail Van Buren, who writes the daily "Dear Abby" column.
"It was a shock and a disbelief and a huge disappointment," she said of learning that anthrax had spoiled this year's letter drive. "But the military has rescued this program and I'm overwhelmed. For a person who writes, I don't have enough superlatives to say about the people who have saved this program."
In the 2 1/2 weeks since the Web site went live, the campaign has collected more than 100,000 messages and been visited more than 8 million times, said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Rudolph Brewington.
The new system will be active year round, rather than just from mid-November through mid-January, Phillips said.
"Dear Abby" started promoting holiday mail initiatives in 1967, with soldiers serving in Vietnam. In the 1980s it grew into Operation Dear Abby, and is credited with providing American troops overseas with tons of mail.
Phillips' mother and current editor, Pauline, created "Dear Abby" in 1956, after calling the
San Francisco Chronicle to say she could write a better advice column than the one in their paper.
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