Nacogdoches Hero Foundation

Nacogdoches Hero Foundation

10 hours ago

This week, we're remembering September 11 by telling the stories of real people, the ones who were there that morning, and the ones who gave everything so that others could go home. We begin with a young man many people came to know only by the red bandana he wore.

Welles Crowther was 24 years old. He worked as an equities trader on the 104th floor of the South Tower, and back home in Upper Nyack, New York, he had been a volunteer firefighter since he was 16. When he was a boy, his father gave him a red bandana, and he carried it with him for years.

After the tower was struck, Welles made his way to the 78th-floor sky lobby, where injured and frightened people had gathered with no clear way out. His face was covered by that red bandana. He spoke in a calm voice, pointed them toward a stairway, and led them down. Then he went back up, and did it again, making several trips before the building came down. He did not make it out. His body was found later in the lobby, alongside firefighters and rescue workers.

For months, the people he had guided out did not know his name, only that a young man in a red bandana had shown them the way. When his mother read one of their accounts, she recognized her son. He is credited with helping as many as eighteen people reach safety that morning. A coworker once asked him about the bandana he kept on his desk. He held it up and said, "With this red bandana, I'm going to change the world."

He was 24.

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