Grandma Etta's hymn for troubled times: 'God Bless America'

Henrietta Creighton - Grandma Etta, please - wants you and me and everyone else in the U.S.A. to sing "God Bless America." Together.

"How many people sit on the couch and hear all the bad news and think, 'What can I do?' " says the Sea Isle City resident, 92, whose singgba.com website and Facebook page are red, white, and blue and ecumenical, too.

"Anyone can get one more house of worship singing 'God Bless America' at the end of their services," she says. "Anyone can get this prayer going. If you love God and love America, you're in."

Her life has been part of what Grandma Etta calls "a great American story." Her mother emigrated from Poland in 1907; her father was a farmer in Prospectville, Pa.; and she and her two sisters sang hymns for a half hour every Sunday morning at the Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in nearby Ambler.

She married a polio survivor from Philadelphia named Bill Creighton in 1944, and together they raised three children and ran Creighton's Trading Post and Sea Isle Hardware, across from each other at 42nd and Landis, for decades.

Bill died in 2000; his widow summers at the Shore and winters in Florida.

"One of my favorite hymns is 'Dare to be Brave, Dare to be True.' I guess it does take a lot of courage to think you can get the message of 'God Bless America' to the entire country," Grandma Etta tells me, sitting in a living room that's filled with family photos and patriotic paraphernalia.

The view of the salt marsh meadows west of the island is spectacular.

"I am so blessed," she says, noting that she sometimes puts a homemade "Sing God Bless America" banner out on the deck so passing party boats can get the message.

Two years ago, after being "nudged by the Lord" for some time, Grandma Etta launched her campaign with the support of her Nettles Island Church in Florida, and assistance from graphic designer Jacquelyn Tocci, the youngest of her 12 grandchildren.

"My grandmother is very enthusiastic and passionate. When she gets an idea, she is full-fledged behind it," says Tocci, 35, of Upper Township, Cape May County.

"But she was having trouble [organizing] it. So the most important thing was the postcard."

Grandma Etta mails the postcards all over the country and hands them out at church services; she just ordered another 5,000.

Featuring patriotic images and symbols of the world's major religions, the postcard urges people to sing the song, includes some lyrics, and also conveys a bit of Grandma Etta's exuberance.

"Her message is a message of unity, of everyone together across religious lines," Tocci says. "I think it's great."

Religious tolerance is indeed a subtext of the mighty tune Irving Berlin composed in 1918, says Sheryl Kaskowitz, the author of God Bless America: The Surprising History of an Iconic Song (Oxford University Press).

"The song has a message for different people at different times," Kaskowitz says from Providence, R.I. "In the 1940s and after 9/11, it was the song people tended to choose for commemorations."

But as Flyers fans know, "God Bless America" also "is a sort of good-luck charm tied in with the ritual of sports," adds the author, whose book includes a photo of singer Kate Smith's statue in the South Philadelphia sports complex.

" 'God Bless America,' " Kaskowitz says, "has an interesting relationship with secularism, and with religious belief."

As far as Grandma Etta is concerned, the song is a prayer, plain and simple. And her campaign seeks nothing less than to unleash a unified wave of "prayer power" across America.

"I don't have an organization. It's simply about passing it along to the next person," she says. "I don't know how many churches are singing it. I don't know who's being moved by it. Sometimes I think, 'Is this old lady going off her rocker?' "

I hardly think so; this is a woman who at 82 brought a great-grandson along to explore Machu Picchu, brews her own Kombucha ("Would you like some?" she asks), and rides a scooter to the beach because there's nowhere to park her convertible.

"I'm not good at pushing buttons on the internet," she says. "But I know this campaign can go because of Twitter and Facebook and all the emails."

She's often working on ideas to take Sing GBA viral, including "bikini patriots," modeled after the so-called petticoat patriots of the Revolutionary War.

"I haven't gone forward with it except to mention it to all the girls in my family," she laughs.

And while Grandma Etta's views might concern some of us liberals - she's a big Ben Carson fan, for instance - there's no doubting the deep roots of her mission. Or her faith.

"We can do this if we dare to try it. If we dare to do it," she says. "We can get people in houses of worship from the Atlantic to the Pacific singing 'God Bless America.' "

God bless you too, Grandma Etta.

kriordan@phillynews.com

856-779-3845 @inqkriordan

www.philly.com/blinq