Brady Kay Howell, 26, was a student body president and Eagle Scout back in his native Idaho. As a youth, he was active in sports and took classes in drama, speech and swing choir.

He also had a strong love for government work. In January, after completing a master's degree in public administration at Syracuse University, he came to the Washington area as a presidential management intern doing intelligence work for the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon.

That's where Howell was working when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building.

Family friend Tim Stewart said Howell was enthusiastic about his job, which often involved top-secret work. He was known to tell friends and family that he had done "cool" stuff that day -- and then joke that they lacked the proper clearance to know more.

Howell was a native of Rexburg, Idaho, grew up in Sugar City, Idaho, and was a political science graduate of Utah State University. He and his wife of four years, Elizabeth Anderson Howell, lived in Arlington, where he taught Sunday school in the Crystal City ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He also is survived by his parents, Kenneth Rex Howell and Jeanette Kay Bills Howell of Sugar City; a grandmother, Frances Tennant Bills of Sandy, Utah; three brothers; and a sister.

-- Adam Bernstein

Source: The Washington Post, AP and washingtonpost.com