MOODY AIR FORCE BASE — When Andrea Pixley became the spouse of an enlisted airman over a decade ago, she had no idea she’d be helping women and families of military members years later. In September 2001 she started one of the first online support networks when her husband Jeff — now an Air Force officer stationed at Moody Air Force Base — deployed to Saudi Arabia.
“I had nothing to do with the military growing up, but I learned very quickly the military is not all the same,” Pixley said. Through her experience on the enlisted side and now as an officer’s spouse, she found a way to help families get through the ups and downs of military life. She started a Web site — 4militaryfamilies.com — and used Yahoo! Groups as the online community to link military family members.
“Yahoo! Groups is basically the No. 1 online community,” said Kim McIntyre, public relations manager for Yahoo!. “With 95 million users, it’s really a way for Yahoo! users to connect. People with busy lives are able to find people with similar interests and values.”
Pixley hoped for a handful of members, and in a year 100 members had joined “4 military families” on Yahoo! Groups. Today, there are 525 members.
“People are spread across the globe, and that makes it very difficult to find the support they need,” McIntyre said. “This enables them to chat with people who share similar experiences. For military families, this is the primary reason people use Groups. It’s at their fingertips.”
Pixley said her Web site and Yahoo! Groups are great resources for families in the National Guard and Reserves — military installments that don’t have as many avenues for helping military dependents. There are instances when newly married spouses face sudden deployments and don’t know how to go about getting military identification cards or power of attorney documents needed to handle business. On one occasion, Pixley’s Web site helped a woman find her father who had served in the military. More recently, she comforted a mother worried about her son who was at basic training.
“She was worried that she hadn’t heard from him and I remembered when Jeff went through training when he enlisted,” Pixley said. “You’re cut off from family to be built up by the military. I learned that no news is good news.”
Pixley said there are members from all over the world who use the site.
McIntyre said communities that begin relationships online often carry over into real-world friendships. “We have people who form lasting friendships and will decide to meet and get together,” she said. “Virtual communities online evolve into the community off line.”
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