Christina-Taylor Green, the nine-year-old killed along with five other people at an Arizona political event last weekend, was drawn to politics from the awareness she was born on 11 September 2001, her parents said.
The third-grader was also one of 50 babies born on that date featured in a book called 'Faces of Hope'.
'She was born back east, and September 11 affected everyone there, and Christina-Taylor was always very aware of it. She was very patriotic and wearing red, white and blue was really special to her,' Roxanne Green told the Arizona Daily Star.
'She was born on 9/11, the day the towers came down in New York City,' her father John Green told Fox News.
'It does say something about our society that my daughter was born on a tragic day, and she went out on a tragic day,' he told CNN in a separate emotional interview.
The nine-year-old had gone to the Tucson strip mall with a neighbour on Saturday to meet congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, according to the daily.
Christina-Taylor died in hospital after the shooting. Her neighbour, identified by the girl's father as Susy Almond, was shot four times and was recovering from surgery at Tucson's University Medical Center.
A total of six people were killed, including a federal judge, and 14 were wounded in the shooting spree.
Christina-Taylor's grandfather Dallas Green was a major league baseball pitcher who managed the Philadelphia Phillies when they won the 1980 World Series.
The girl loved animals, dancing and gymnastic and was the sole female on her Little League baseball team, the daily said.
'She kept up with everyone, she was a strong girl, a very good athlete and a strong swimmer,' said her mother. 'She was interested in everything. She got a guitar for Christmas so her next thing was learning to play guitar.'
Christina-Taylor was recently elected to the Mesa Verde Elementary School student council and had been interested in politics from a young age, said her father, who works as a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.
'She was a good speaker. I could have easily seen her as a politician,' he told the Arizona newspaper.
Christina-Taylor, her mother said, also enjoyed singing in a church choir and earlier last year received her first Holy Communion as a Catholic.
'She was all about helping people, and being involved. It's so tragic. She went to learn today and then someone with so much hatred in their heart took the lives of innocent people.'
Her father told Fox News that the last time he saw his daughter was Saturday morning, just before she left for the political event.
'We made breakfast and said goodbye, saying 'I love you daddy'.'
'So beautiful - we had nine beautiful years with her.'
A 22-year-old man has been charged in connection with Saturday's fatal shootings in Tucson, in which US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was also seriously wounded.
