A former ISU gymnast who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will be remembered by a memorial plaque on display in Gold Star Hall in the Memorial Union.

Mari-Rae Sopper was one of 64 passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles when the plane was hijacked by terrorists and intentionally crashed into the Pentagon. Sopper was 35 years old.

The 16-inch by 20-inch engraved walnut plaque will be on easel display through Friday, said Kathy Svec, marketing coordinator for the Memorial Union. Accompanying the plaque is an information panel which explains Sopper’s ties to Iowa State, she said.

“We chose to [display the plaque] in a very prominent place,” she said. “It will be very hard to miss for people coming and going from the building.”

Svec said after Friday the plaque will be moved to a permanent location that has not yet been determined.

“We’d like it to be displayed in a place … she frequented on campus,” she said.

Dennis Downs of Waterloo was the donor of the memorial plaque.

“Shortly after 9/11, I had an idea of a memorial committee here in Waterloo,” he said. “That went nowhere and so I decided I was going to do something and so I had plaques made for the victims who died who were from Iowa.”

Downs donated memorial plaques to the families and hometowns of Sopper, Craig Amundson of Anamosa, Jim Cleere of Newton, Tim Haviland of Ames, Karen Kincaid of Waverly, Sandra Teague of West Des Moines and Michael Tinley of Council Bluffs.

Downs said watching the “three hundred-plus fire fighters and police officers walking into hell” inspired his idea for the plaques.

“[The Sept. 11 attacks] just devastated me like the rest of the country,” he said. “I know these plaques, for the most part, will gather dust and be forgotten, but I hope that someday someone’s grandkid will look at the plaque and ask their grandma or grandpa to read the [inscription] and help them understand.”

Born June 19, 1966, Sopper graduated from Iowa State in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in physical education and then went on to earn a master’s degree in athletic administration from the University of North Texas in 1993. Three years later, she graduated from the University of Denver College of Law. She then went on to practice law at the U.S. Naval Academy in Washington D.C.

Sopper was setting out for a new life when Flight 77 went down, according to the memorial Web site built by her family, www.mari-rae.net. That summer she had decided to quit her job as an attorney in Washington D.C. and follow her life-long passion of gymnastics.

Sopper was heading for her new job as head coach for women’s gymnastics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

According to an article on ESPN’s Web site, espn.go.com/ ncaa/news/2001/0912/1250854.html, Sopper had also worked as an assistant coach for the U.S. Naval Academy’s women’s gymnastics team. She had served as a graduate assistant at the University of Denver, as the floor exercise coach and choreographer for the Colorado Gymnastics Institute and as a Junior Olympic gymnastics coach in Dallas.

ISU Gymnastics Coach K.J. Kindler said Sopper was a senior on the ISU gymnastics team the year she was recruited.

“She did a great job for ISU,” she said. “She was a top all-arounder at the time and had a huge impact on the team.”

Kindler described Sopper as having a “huge heart” and being “very passionate and determined.”

She said she and Sopper had always stayed in contact with one another and Kindler served as a reference for Sopper when she was applying for several positions.

“She gave up a job where she was making three or four times as much to do something she had always wanted to try,” she said.

Kindler recalled receiving a last e-mail from Sopper two days before her death expressing her excitement about her new job, when she’d arrive and how coaching had always been her dream.

“Even when it happened, I didn’t even think it had happened to her until her mother called me in my office,” she said.

Kindler said many of the gymnasts she coaches were amazed something like that could happen.

The crash of American Airlines Flight 77 killed a total of 190 people, including 64 in the airplane and 126 people working in the Pentagon.