Christina Taylor Green’s patriotism was inspired by a tragedy on her birth date — Sept. 11, 2001. Another national tragedy took the third-grader’s life. Christina was shot and killed Saturday, along with five other people killed outside a supermarket where a neighbor had taken her to meet Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
The brown-eyed athletic 9-year-old girl was an aspiring politician and had just been elected to the student council at Tucson’s Mesa Verde Elementary School. The girl already had told her parents she wanted to attend Penn State and have a career that involved helping those less fortunate than her.
She was the only girl on her Canyon del Oro Little League baseball team and played second base. John Green said his daughter wanted to be the first woman to play major league baseball. The game was in her blood. Her dad is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers and her grandfather, former big league pitcher Dallas Green, managed the 1980 world champion Philadelphia Phillies.
“She was a strong girl, a very good athlete,” Roxanna Green, her mother told the newspaper. “She was interested in everything. She got a guitar for Christmas so her next thing was learning to play guitar.”