The Red Bandanna

Fresh from college, Welles Crowther took a Wall Street job on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Welles did not survive the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, but eight months after the attacks, a news account from several survivors said they and others had been led to safety by a stranger, carrying a woman on his back, down nearly twenty flights of stairs. After leading them down, the young man turned around. “I’m going back up,” was all he said. The survivors didn’t know his name, but despite the smoke and panic, one of them remembered a single detail clearly: the man was wearing a red bandanna. That man was Welles, and this is his story.