President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet the Green family after the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25. John and Roxanna Green are the parents of eleven-year-old Dallas and the late Christina Taylor, the nine-year-old girl killed when a gunman opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson earlier this month. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
“Don’t cry - again.”
A seat sits empty for recovering Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
…with John, Dallas and Roxanna Green, family of the late Christina Taylor Green of Tucson
…with Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
with Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill, right, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., center, and Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa
Read the text of the address here
President Obama’s arrival:
The official White House video:
Here’s the C-Span version:
Enhanced White House version:
Helene Cooper (New York Times): President Obama is not known for showing a surplus of emotion in public, but toward the end of his speech at the University of Arizona, he paused for 51 seconds and appeared to gather himself.
….9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green’s death was an emotional punch to the gut for so many people across the country. Among them … is the president himself, whose younger daughter, Sasha, was born three months before Christina.
“I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it,” Mr. Obama had just said. “All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”
And then he stopped. After 10 seconds, he looked to his right. After 20 seconds, he took a deep breath. After 30 seconds, he started blinking. Then his jaw tightened. Finally, after 51 seconds of silence, he began to speak again, describing a book published after Sept. 11, 2001 - the day Christina was born - that included her picture and simple wishes for a child’s life, including one inscription that read “I hope you jump in rain puddles.”
It was a stark moment for Mr. Obama, both as a president and as a father … he made no explicit mention of either Sasha or her older sister, Malia. But they have been on his mind as he has grappled with how to respond to the shootings…. the president, friends said, was initially hesitant about calling Christina’s parents after the shootings, saying that if it had happened to his daughters, he would not be capable of talking to anyone. He eventually did call the Greens … and then met with them before his speech.
..on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama’s perspective as a parent came through, propelling him to what is likely to be remembered as the one of the most soaring moments of his presidency.
Full article here
Philadelphia Inquirer: Her smiling infant photo in a 2002 book about 9-11 babies is now, like the terrible irony of her short life’s span, almost too painful to contemplate.
Christina-Taylor Green, the energetic granddaughter of former Phillies manager Dallas Green, existed in the brief interlude between two great American tragedies.
Born just hours after the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the 9-year-old was killed Saturday in an Arizona massacre in which a Congresswoman was critically injured and five others, including a federal judge, slain.
…In “Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9-11”, a book by Pennsylvanian Christine Pisana Naman that spotlighted one child from each state, a wishful quote accompanied the black-and-white photo of the then-tiny girl. “I hope,” it read, “you see rainbows.”
The youngest of two children of Green’s son, John, she was among 20 people shot by a lone gunman during a Tucson shopping-center meeting sponsored by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
The third-grader at Mesa Verde Elementary School had gone to the event with a neighbor because she had recently been elected to the student council and already had an interest in politics. The neighbor, Tucson authorities said, was shot four times but survived.
“She was a good speaker,” her father told the Arizona Star Saturday. “I could have easily seen her as a politician.”
…The death of the 9-year-old who was born in Maryland also resonated in the baseball community. Her grandfather, still a senior adviser for the Phillies, guided the Phillies to their first world championship in 1980. Her father, meanwhile, is a Los Angeles Dodgers scout.
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