The New York Times
January 9, 2011
9-Year-Old Victim Was a 9/11 Baby, a ‘Face of Hope’
By JOSEPH BERGER
Christina Green was on the student council of her elementary school, so on Saturday her mother’s friend thought she might enjoy seeing government in action — the local congresswoman meeting with constituents outside a supermarket near Christina’s home.
“I allowed her to go, thinking it would be an innocent thing,” said the girl’s mother, Roxanna Green, 45.
It did not turn out that way. A gunman shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords, leaving her unconscious and in critical condition, and his fusillade killed six others, including Christina, a 9-year-old who loved animals and volunteered at a children’s charity.
She was special from birth because she was born on Sept. 11, 2001, and she was proud of it, her mother said, because it lent a grace note of hope to that terrible day.
“It was an emotional time for everyone in the family, but Christina’s birth was a happy event and made the day bittersweet,” her mother said in a telephone interview from their Tucson home.
Indeed, Christina, who was born when the family was living in West Grove, Pennsylvania, was one of the 50 “Faces of Hope” representing babies from 50 states who were born on 9/11. Their images were printed in a book, with some of the proceeds used to raise money for a 9/11 charity.
“From the very beginning, she was an amazing child,” her mother said. “She was very bright, very mature, off the charts. She was the brightest thing that happened that day.”
Her mother, who grew up as Roxanna Segalini in the Bronx and Scarsdale, N.Y., is a registered nurse by training, and has been a stay-at-home mom shepherding Christina and her 11-year-old brother, Dallas. Christina’s father, John Green, is a supervising scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. Her grandfather, Dallas Green, managed the Philadelphia Phillies to the 1980 World Series championship and also managed the Yankees and Mets.
Christina was an A student and was interested in politics, so her mother accepted the offer by her friend Susan Hileman to take Christina to the congresswoman’s town hall meeting. John Green told the Arizona Star that Christina was such a good speaker, “I could have easily seen her as a politician.”
But Christina also seems to have inherited her family’s baseball genes. She was on the Little League baseball team, its only girl, her mother said.
“She was an athlete, a good dancer, a good gymnast, a good swimmer,” her mother said. “She belonged to Kids Helping Kids charity and tried to help children less fortunate.”
Christina, a slender girl with brownish blonde hair, brown eyes and a gentle smile, also sang in the choir at St. Odilia Roman Catholic Church. At home she took care of pet geckos, but loved frolicking with the dogs and cats of neighbors and friends. In the big-dreams way of children, she told her mother she wanted to be a veterinarian and study at an eastern school like New York University.
“She was cute as a button,” her mother said. “I could never imagine this was going to happen.”
In an interview she gave to Fox News, Mrs. Green said learned that Christina was injured and at the University Medical Center in Tucson in a call from her friend’s husband.
“I just assumed there was a car accident,” Mrs. Green said. “I asked him what had happened, if there was a car accident, and he had no idea. So then, of course, I started getting real upset. I grabbed my son and called my husband — he wasn’t at home — and we all just rushed over there.
“We waited for a while and then the surgeon and people from the ICU unit came in and police officers and other people, and they told us the bad news. She had a bullet hole to the chest, and they tried to save her but she just couldn’t make it. It was really, really bad.”
Mrs. Green said she hoped that Christina’s death would bring not only justice in the jailing of her attacker but also a national awareness of the cost of a venomous political dialogue.
“I think there’s been a lot of hatred going on and it needs to stop,” she said.
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