Rep. Troy Downing remembers being on a moose hunt in rural Alaska when planes hijacked by terrorists attacked the Pentagon and felled the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, in the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.

“I was probably the last person on the planet to find out about it,” the Montana Republican said.

Over three days hiking through the wilderness, Downing began to wonder why none of the usual planes were flying overhead. It wasn’t until a Grumman Goose airplane came to pick them up from Lake Chikuminuk that he heard the news.

“I remember vividly the pilot just stuck his head out the window, he’s still on the plane, and just yells at us, goes, ‘Guess what?,’” he recalled. The news, Downing said, “just hit me in the chest.”

The day after he got home, he walked

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