Kate Smith, Move Over: Here’s Erin

America’s war on terror has its resolute leaders and heroic warriors. Now it may have a mascot in a 2 1/2-year-old moppet that people at this missile-testing facility call the God Bless America Girl.

In recent months, Erin Bradley has piled up more press notices than most actors. She calls broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer a friend, is pursued by agents, and has been asked for autographs even though she can’t write.

All because after Sept. 11 she learned to sing--and has since sung incessantly--”God Bless America.” Her rendition of the Irving Berlin classic, enthusiastic if not letter-perfect, has brought men to tears and stopped shoppers in their tracks at the mall.

Asked in the living room of her family’s stucco bungalow if she likes being famous, the 3-foot, 30-pound dynamo said, “Yeah. Want to see my room?”

Asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she burst into a series of flailing, spinning moves that vaguely suggested a ballerina. “I got a Barbie Nutcracker,” she said when she stopped twirling.

If she is unaffected by her sudden celebrity, her parents, Staff Sgt. Christopher Bradley and his wife, Dara, are nearly stupefied.

“It’s been overwhelming, thrilling,” said Dara Bradley, 34. Thrills included having her makeup touched up on “Good Morning America” by the woman who works on the “Sopranos” television series.

There have been chills, too. Dara Bradley feared her daughter would refuse to sing on camera. She’s only 2, after all. (She’ll be 3 in March.)

They needn’t have worried. When host Charles Gibson introduced her as “perhaps America’s youngest patriot,” she grabbed a toy microphone and belted, or at least warbled, the song on cue.

America’s little cheerleader is part of a close-knit military family on this Air Force base spread along the Central Coast. Her father is a heavy equipment operator who hunts wild boar as a hobby. Her mother was a semipro bowler with a 202 average who now stays home. “That’s my work,” said Dara Bradley, pointing at her daughter.

The couple met at a karaoke bar in Santa Maria when Chris Bradley walked up and said, “Where have you been all my life?”

Neither is a singer, though “I sing in the shower sometimes,” Dara Bradley said. When she was pregnant, she often held a music box against her stomach.

Even if her parents were inclined to push their daughter in front of the lights, which they insist they are not, well, maybe just a little, Erin didn’t seem to need stage-managing. All she needed was a song.

It came by way of the Sept. 11 tragedies. “God Bless America” became ubiquitous, from church to the World Series.

Erin has an uncanny alertness (her mother swears she came out of the womb with eyes open, studying her surroundings) and an acute memory. In no time, she picked up the song, made famous by Kate Smith, who first sang it on her radio broadcast on Armistice Day 1938 and who made it the signature number on her popular program.

“She’s a little parrot,” Dara Bradley said of Erin.

She began singing it--everywhere. Her parents were not prepared for the reaction their daughter would provoke in strangers.

The first incident occurred in the doctor’s office.

Dara Bradley said her doctor, a man not given to emotional outbursts, emerged from his office laughing and clapping when he heard Erin singing in the waiting room.

A similar thing happened when Dara went into the hospital for surgery. “She took over the nurse’s station,” her mother said.

In a store parking lot, a military veteran stopped them with tears in his eyes. “That’s the kind of reaction we’d get wherever we went,” Dara Bradley said.

The parents’ only stab at stage-managing came when the proud mother called the local TV station, KCOY, and said they had to hear the God Bless America Girl.

TV stations get such calls all the time, and they weren’t that interested, said a spokeswoman, until the station returned the call and got the family answering machine, containing Erin’s song.

Station officials decided, “OK, we’ll do the story.” After that, the station sent the tape to CNN, which supplied it to 700 affiliates.

Next came “Good Morning America,” where the little blue-eyed girl virtually took control of the show.

And now the toddler patriot is also a name-dropper, referring to Sawyer as a friend one minute, her cousin the next (her parents said they were going to see relatives when they boarded the plane for New York).

Now that Erin’s a celebrity, some people act strangely. Dara Bradley came back from the restroom in a restaurant recently to find her daughter scribbling away on a piece of paper. It turned out a woman in the next booth wanted Erin’s autograph.

When told the girl can’t write, the woman said that was OK; her mark would do.

Most common are simple expressions of gratitude from people who are touched by the girl’s song, even if Erin cannot fully comprehend why adults start crying in her presence.

Even the military men and women here are not immune to the charms of their little ingenue. She gave a command performance last week for one of the commanders of this base, the primary West Coast launch site for Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles.

Despite all the attention, life has not changed much for Erin and her parents. Erin still spends much of her time playing with her Barbie and chasing her dog, a lab named Diesel, around the yard.

She loves to stand upright on the open palms of her dad’s hands. “You ain’t scared of . . .,” he said. “. . . Nothin’!” she yelled back, punching the air with her fists.

An agent from Santa Barbara wants to sign the girl, but her parents are hesitant to involve her in show business. “If nothing else comes out of it,” said Christopher Bradley, “it was a great experience.”

“I’m saving everything,” her mother said. “Someday she’s going to be able to show her children and grandchildren that she was the God Bless America Girl.”