The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 3

A3 EMfldDDi News Briefs E8 More National News E8 THE BOSTON GLOBE MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1997 Cross-Country Journal Antidrug ads aimed at youths are planned for 12 US cities ASSOCIATED PRESS JAYSON BLAIR Lights, creche, "and carols at Mormon event for their diverse' ethnic, demographic, and geographic audiences. The messages will focus on "entry-level," or easily obtained substances, such as marijuana and inhalants. Some cities will also see ads addressing drug problems specific to them. The announcement follows President Clinton's radio address Saturday, in which he announced that a University of Michigan survey had found that eighth graders increasingly turn away from drugs. But the same survey showed greater drug use among older teenagers.

McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said. "Today's announcement marks the January initiation of a multifaceted national campaign that will harness the energies of parents, mass media, corporate America and the antidrug coalitions to halt and reverse the disturbing rise in drug use among young people," McCaffrey said in a statement. The ads are to be tested from January through April in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boise, Idaho; Denver, Hartford, Houston, Milwaukee, Portland, San Diego, Sioux City, Iowa; Tucson, and Washington. McCaffrey said the cities were selected ENSINGTON, WASHINGTON Seeking to reinforce findings that more American youths are turning away from drugs, the administration announced yesterday that it is starting a $195 million antidrug campaign targeting the young in 12 US cities. Cities in the program's four-month, $20 million opening phase range from Hartford to San Diego.

Antidrug ads will run everywhere children aged 9 to 17 are likely to be watching, from television to the Internet, Barry though they are Jewish, the Herschthals have incorporated the 248-foot white marble Washington Temple of the barry McCaffrey Heads drug policy unit Mormon Church into their holiday tradi-' tibns. Julie Herschthal and her family have crossed Stoneybrook Drive, a two-lane road hi front of their red-brick home, to sing car- ols at the enormous temple each December for 17 years. "It's wonderful," she said recently. She first visited the temple's annual Christmas i 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.

FRANCIS PHARCELLUS CHURCH In an editorial published in the New York Sun in 1897 festival in 1980. The Herschthals are among nearly 250,000 people from around the country who come to the tem Kensington James Temple (above) said his grandmother's letter 'reminds people of home, of when they were young and they remembered Christmas with great The letter, written by 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon, has been reprinted by hundreds of newspapers -in more than 20 languages in the Christ-mastimes since 1897. AP FILE PHOTO VTJt jf Virginia O'Hanlon telling the story of Santa Claus at a Christmas party In 1945. 0'Hanlon lived in Manhattan jf until 1959 most of that time in the same apartment where she had penned her famous childhood query. A child's query echoes across the ages And a timeless response still Dear Rdilor: embraces spirit of the season I am 8 years okl.

i. Some my Uitfe ftieocb fiav i no nli i By Fred Kaplan GLOBE STAFF 'A "aria sars; 4if vou see it in Sun it ink PlienassSM toll Wa i ple for the annual Festival of Lights, a nightly display of thousands of lights, miniature nativity scenes from around the world, and caroling. Visitors fill parking lots along the road where the Herschthals live and the lights can be seen from the Capital Beltway, miles away. Among Mormon temples, the Washington Temple is dwarfed only by structures in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. The unique architecture of the six-spired building has given it the reputation of being the most beautiful of the church's 51 temples, from Mexico City to Hamilton, New Zealand.

Secluded in the woods of Rock Creek Park, the temple, church officials say, is the largest nongovernmental tourist attraction in the Washington area. It serves Mormon faithful from Maine to North Carolina. The festival has been a tradition for more than 20 years in the Washington area. The church holds similiar events in Salt Lake City and Mesa, Ariz. Mac Christensen, who with his wife, Joan, left Bountiful, Utah, to head the Washington temple's visitor center, said he is amazed at how Washingtonians come together to make the annual event a success.

"People have been very generous, gentle, and excited to help," Christensen said. Beulah Sommer, who lives in White Oak, donated several of the nativity scenes. "We have a mutual admiration for each 6th-r ef and they do a good job," she said. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-; day Saints puts a strong emphasis on service for its 9.5 million worldwide members, Christensen said, but people within and out-side the church are crucial to pulling off the festival. When the festival began, 20 years ago, there were only 30,000 lights, said Ellis Le-; vine, a volunteer from Knoxville, Tenn.

Now there are 300,000 lights. Red, green, and white represent Christmas, and blue was added to symbolize Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. The festival also attracts help from a number of religious and nonreligious organi- zations, with performance groups ranging from a Navy band to a barbershop quartet i to a Baptist choir. International Christmas trees represent- ing each of thecontinents arewrthsplayrand I each of the miniature wooden nativity scenes is hand-carved and represents a country. Some of the nativity scenes were donated by the countries they represent, like the i miniatures from Germany that are designed like Nutcracker dolls.

"There are different cultures of the world saying the same thing," said Kerry Jo-; hanson, 42, a volunteer from Oakton, Va. i i This year, church officials who organize the event generated some controversy when they asked the Russian ambassador to the United States, Yuli Vorontsov, to turn on the lights the first night of the festival. In September, the Russian Parliament voted to forbid many religious groups, including the Mormons, from opening churches, proselytizing, or owning property or businesses. The law sparked criticism from Mormon leaders and Utah politicians. Republican Senator Robert Bennett of Utah hinted at withholding aid to Russia.

But after visiting the country with other congressional leaders, he said he had received assurances from 4 Russian officials "that the Mormons would be' considered an established religion and the law would not apply to them." Donald Staheli, a senior leader in the Mormon Church, said he hoped inviting the Russian delegation would help clear up any misunderstandings about the church. Jaysan Blair is a Globe correspondent in Maryland. jf tKe tiriith, there a Virginia O'Hanlon West 95th Street Nr ORTH CHATHAM, N.Y. It was 100 years ago that a little girl named Virginia O'Hanlon sat at the desk in her bedroom and, full of hope and anxiety, wrote a letter that, forever- more, put a whole new slant on Christmas. "I am 8 years old," began the letter, addressed to the editor of the New York Sun, at the time among the most prominent of the city's daily newspapers.

"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it is Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?" Amid the editorial writer's reply popped out the phrase 'All I did was ask a O'Hanlon once said. tion between her and Christmas, the spirit of Christmas. It Jiolno mo anH nil mv eietoro mnlfo euro nnr mtm rliilrpn that entered the national vocabulary: "Yes, Virginia, there beiieved in Santa Claus. We kept that going as long as we is a Santa Claus." ment of answering this letter from a child, but then saw it as an opportunity to address a modern malady.

Those who doubted Santa's existence, he wrote, "have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist." Sure, no one has seen Santa, he allowed, but "the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding." Decades later, reporters would ask O'Hanlon if she still believed in Santa Claus. "Why, of course," she replied.

"The verities of the editorial are just as true as they ever were." Her grandson remembered that she was always willing to talk about the letter and to read it, every year, to the village church but she never boasted of it "All I did was ask a question," she told one reporter many years ago. "I didn't do anything special. My parents were always writing letters to the Sun, asking the pronunciation of a word or how to play whist It just seemed to me to be the thing to do." Asked by the interviewer why she wrote the letter so long before Christmas it first ran in the Sun on Sept. 21, 1897 she said, "My birthday was in July and, as a child, I just existed from July to December, wondering what Santa Claus would bring me. I think I was a brat." O'Hanlon grew up to be an unusually accomplished woman for her times.

She received a master's degree in modern languages from Columbia University in 1911 and then, in 1936, at the age of 47, went back to school to earn a doctorate from Fordham University. She smoked cigarettes, loved to watch baseball games, and dressed to the proverbial nines. "She was out of place when she came up here," Temple recalled with a smile. "She would wear hats, high heels, a nice coat She was dressed for the city." Her life had sorrows, too. She was married briefly to a man named Edward Douglas, who abandoned her shortly before their only child, Laura Virginia, was born.

She kept his surname anyway, calling herself Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas, and never remarried. Still, she told the St Louis Post-Dispatch in an interview published on Christmas Eve in 1947, "I grew up in a lovely time, the beginning of a new era. I have been hap- py" Her grandson, when asked why her letter still carries such appeal, replied, "I think it reminds people of home, of when they were young and they remembered Christmas with great expectations." could till they were 10 years old, or so." Alberta Grove, the postmaster North Chatham for nearly a half-century, recalled that during the years O'Hanlon lived here, "we got lots and lots of mail for her every Christmas, from all over the world -1 mean," she added, holding her hands a foot apart, "bundles of mail." In Valacie, a neighboring village, in a park on the corner of Main and Church streets, stands a statue of Santa Claus that bears a plaque to O'Hanlon's memory. The statue was put up by the local Santa Claus Club, which was formed on Christmas Eve in 1946, when a group of war veterans dressed up as Santa and delivered gifts to every child's house. Their successors still do that each year and inspired the creation of a few dozen other Santa Claus Clubs around the country.

"I don't know if it's mystical or what," said Dominick Lizzi, a spokesman for the group and Valacie's village historian, "but it's very strange that here she was, this little lady living for years in New York City then she moves up here, where the first Santa Claus Club was formed. She's like the embodiment of the spirit of Christmas." O'Hanlon's letter came at a time when the Santa Claus myth was fairly new. Cartoonist Thomas Nast had scribbled the image of a fat, jolly man with a white beard and a red suit only a few decades earlier. The Sun editorial was written by Francis Pharcellus Church though, until well after he died, in 1906 at the age of 67, few outside the paper's staff knew the author's name. A descendant of the governor of Massachusetts Colony and son of a Baptist minister, Church had been a Civil War correspondent for The New York Times before joining the staff of the Sun (which shut down in 1950 after many years of decline).

The story goes that he balked at the assign- i The letter and its response were published in the Sun in 1897. It has been reprinted by hundreds of newspapers in more than 20 languages in the Christmastimes since. And it made Virginia O'Hanlon a legend. She lived in Manhattan for 52 more years after writing the letter most of that time in the same apartment, at 115 W. 95th Street, where she had penned her childhood query.

Then, in 1959, she retired from her job as a schoolteacher and moved in with her daughter's family in this tiny village south of Albany population 300 until she died, in 1971, at the age of 81. One of her seven grandchildren, James Temple, now 58 and retired, lives here still. His grandmother once told him that the letter didn't cause much of a stir when it first appeared. Five or six years passed before word of the essay spread, but, once it did, the whole country embraced it. By December 1930, the Sun reported receiving 163,840 requests for copies of the editorial during that Christmas season alone.

In 1933, O'Hanlon, then 44, was asked by Hunter College, her alma mater, to give a lecture on the letter. News accounts reported widespread astonishment that the famous Virginia was real and still living in New York Her fame soared with the rise of mass media. During the 1940s, movie actress Faye Bainter recited the letter and the Sun's reply every year on various national radio shows, including Bing Crosby's. O'Hanlon happily went along with the role carved out for her. "I remember my grandmother, seated near the fireplace at Christmas time, reading the letter and the editorial aloud," Temple said.

"There was, in my mind, a connec-.