But this year, she can’t bring herself to put on a happy face and sing holiday songs.

Last year during the week between Christmas and new Year’s, she lost her husband to pancreatic cancer.

Gary Pixley was 70.

Now Annie has thrown herself into a crusade to increase awareness of this deadly form of cancer, which claimed the lives of Patrick Swayze last year and, in 1991, Michael Landon.

“It doesn’t just attack movie stars,” Pixley said.

Gary and Annie met when he sold radio time and she worked for an ad agency in upstate new York.

Their marriage, the second for each, lasted nearly 25 years.

Gary established a painting and wallpaper business. They moved to Wilmington in 1985, and Gary started all over again, branching out into deck restoration and power washing.

Theirs was a harmonious relationship: He sang with the Cape Fear Chordsmen and she with the Harmony Belles.

It’s been a difficult year for Annie, “a whole bunch of firsts, as anyone who has lost someone can attest,” she said.

Now she’s facing her first Thanksgiving without him, then the first Christmas.

He was diagnosed Memorial Day weekend 2009. it took just six months for the cancer to claim him.

“I fought for both of us,” she said with fierce pride.

He would undergo three weeks of chemotherapy and one week off.

“I made sure those weekends we went off someplace,” she said. “We tried to live as fully and normally as possible.”

“I think he knew from the beginning,” she said wistfully. “I thought he could beat it.”

Unfortunately, few people do. Pancreatic cancer has the highest death rate among the major cancers, according to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. some 76 percent of patients die within a year of diagnosis, and just 5 percent live more than five years.

This year, the network said, more than 42,000 Americans will be diagnosed and the disease will kill more than 35,000.

The pancreas is a gland next to the stomach. it produces enzymes that aid in digestion, and hormones including insulin that regulate blood sugar levels.

The cancer typically creates few or no symptoms until it has become advanced. known risk factors include smoking, obesity and diabetes, but more research is needed in this area.

Early detection is the key to beating many forms of cancer, but there are no early detection methods for pancreatic cancer.

More research is needed in this area also, and that’s the focus of Pixley’s mission.

The network urges passage of the Pancreatic Cancer Research & Education Act, which would increase funding for the National Cancer Institute and direct the NCI to give more attention to pancreatic cancer research.

See the network’s website, pancan.org, for more information.

Pixley traveled to Washington, D.C., in June to meet with lawmakers and their aides. Other members of the network’s 400-member lobbying team were surprised that Pixley made the trip so soon after her husband’s death.

But she had a vow to fulfill.

“I made a promise to him that I would fight for him, and fight for others who got this disease,” she said.

Pixley, who splits her time between Wilmington and Wake Forest, is beginning to expand her outreach to include health fairs and other events. For more information, e-mail her at .

Contact Si Cantwell at 343-2364 or , or follow him on Twitter.com: @SiCantwell.