Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, Governor Kim Reynolds is like many Americans — she remembers where she was when she heard the news.
“I was actually a county treasurer at that point and we were driving to Ames for a treasurers’ meeting and I got the phone call that, ‘You’re not going to believe this. Our country’s under attack,'” Reynolds said. “It was just disbelief and I challenged them, so I turned on the radio.”
Reynolds said the shock of that news for Americans who were alive on 9/11 is like what Pearl Harbor was to those who were alive in 1941. “I just think it’s important that we never, ever forget,” Reynolds said. “It’s really hard even to this day, 25 years later, to look at the impact of that horrific act.”
Reynolds has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff from sunrise to sunset today. A news release from the governor’s office has identified the following eight victims with Iowa connections who were among the nearly three-thousand people killed on 9/11: James Cleere, 55, Newton; Karen Ann Kincaid, 40, Waverly; Mari-Rae Sopper, 35, formerly of Ames; Michael Tinley, 56, formerly of Council Bluffs; SPC Craig Scott Amundson, 28, Cedar Rapids; Lt. Col. Gary F. Smith, 55, Council Bluffs; Timothy Aaron Haviland, 41, formerly of Ames; Sandra Dawn Teague, 31, formerly of Des Moines and West Des Moines.
(Reporting by Caron Schubert, KSOU, Sioux Center)