Carrying his name

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. The 25th anniversary of 9/11 has passed. But remembering that day cannot be confined to a single date on the calendar. For a generation born since that time, the stories are becoming history.

EICHER: And one of those stories has a fresh chapter. It was a week ago today that President Trump posthumously honored a 9/11 hero who died working to save others on that day. Trump presented the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the mother and sister of Welles Crowther. Here is WORLD commentator Bethel McGrew.

BETHEL MCGREW: They called him The Man in the Red Bandana. Wherever Welles Crowther went, the bandana went with him, a childhood gift from his father that became a calling card. On the morning of September 11, the college athlete turned stock trader was 24 years old, working on the 105th floor of Two World Trade Center. When a plane hit the first tower, he called his mother and left a voicemail.

WELLES CROWTHER: Mom, this is Welles. I … I want you to know that I’m okay.

Seventeen minutes later, the second plane would hit. Miraculously, Welles found his way almost thirty floors down to the impact zone, where he found a scene of pure carnage. Without a second to waste, Welles found the only intact stairwell left, then told whoever could stand to follow him. And those who couldn't stand, he carried.

TRUMP: He helped some out physically, then literally pulled them out toward the only working stairwell and carried those who couldn't walk. And he just did things that people said were not even imaginable because they knew they were dead. They said, “We’re goners. One guy was screaming, we’re goners, we’re goners.”

Welles made repeated trips up and down the stairs, putting out small fires as he went. He was acting on muscle memory of his training as a volunteer fireman, where he’d recently told his father he believed his true calling really lay. At the Presidential Medal ceremony, his mother Allison paid tribute to the company that trained him:

ALLISON CROWTHER: This is a calling, and Welles, following in the footsteps of his father, Jefferson, joined Empire at the age of 16. He was no longer an equities trader on 9-11. He was a firefighter.

When the South Tower collapsed, Welles was in the lobby, preparing to go up yet again with his brother firemen.

In the days after the attacks, Allison Crowther scoured the papers for any clues about her son’s final minutes. Then one day, she found it: Survivor testimony of a mysterious man in a red bandana. When he called them to stand up, they said something in his voice made them obey.

His family has kept the story alive ever since. And at Boston College, his alma mater, a “red bandana” football game honors his memory every year. This year, it was held on September 11.

JOURNALIST: 25 years, it’s more than an anniversary. It’s a generation. And the students here at BC weren’t even alive in 2001, and that’s what makes the meaning of this game so special, a reminder of what’s changed in the years since.

The events of that day may be slipping into history. But Alison Crowther hopes her son’s memory will never die.

ALISON CROWTHER: Twenty-five years after September 11th, his life continues to remind us of something very simple. In moments when others need us, each of us has the power to choose courage, compassion, and service. That’s the real meaning of the Red Bandana. To be courageous. To find the good. To be the good.

Not all heroes wear capes. One hero wore a red bandana.

For WORLD, I’m Bethel McGrew.

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