It has been two decades since the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and we need to make sure we continue to honor the lives of the people who died that day.

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I was in 5th grade on September 11th, 2001 and more specifically I had stayed home from school that day sick with a headache. My mom was a stay at home mom, and I'll never forget sitting on the couch with her that whole morning, glued to the news, as we watched the world as we know it change forever. We all remember where we were that day, who we were with, and what we were doing when the United States was under attack.

I'm born, raised, and live in the state of Illinois, I am proud to be from the Land of Lincoln. 20 years after 9/11 I am just now realizing there were multiple people killed that morning who were also from Illinois. According to the website patch.com of the almost 3,000 people killed that day, 9 were from Illinois, their names are...

-Kathy Bantis, Andrea Lyn Haberman, Suzanne Kondratenko, Darya Lin, Jeffery Peter Mladenik, Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Jude Murphy, Robert Arthur Rasmussen, Susan Sauer, and Cmdr. Dan Frederic Shanower.

To read more about these people just click here.

In my opinion we owe it to the people who were killed that day to continue to learn more about them, honor their lives, and keep their stories going, along with the thousands of others who were injured, and made it out of the attacks alive. As a lifelong Illinoisan seeing these names of people from places like Chicago, a place that I call home, hits even closer to home on this 20th anniversary.

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