The Man in the Red Bandana: Welles Crowther’s Final Act of Courage

On the morning of September 11, 2001, just minutes after United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 24-year-old Welles Crowther picked up his phone and called home.
“Mom,” he said calmly, “this is Welles. I want you to know that I’m okay.”

Those were the last words his mother, Alison, would ever hear from him.

Welles worked as an equities trader for Sandler O’Neill and Partners on the 104th floor of the South Tower. A former volunteer firefighter, he could have tried to save himself when disaster struck — but instead, he ran toward the danger.

Grabbing his trademark red bandana, the same one he’d carried since childhood, he tied it over his mouth and nose and began climbing down to the 78th floor sky lobby, where the plane had hit. The scene was chaos — smoke, fire, debris, and confusion. Yet witnesses remembered one man who stood out: tall, calm, and sure of what needed to be done.

“Everyone who can stand, stand now,” he told them. “If you can help others, do it.”

Welles carried one injured woman down 15 floors to safety, then turned around and went back up to help more. He moved with purpose, organizing survivors, leading them to exits, and returning again and again through smoke and flames.

One survivor, Ling Young, later told CNN, “He is definitely my guardian angel. Without him, we would have been sitting there waiting until the building collapsed.”

Because of Welles, at least a dozen people survived that day — people who later came forward with stories of “the man in the red bandana.”

When rescue crews eventually found his body, it was in a stairwell alongside firefighters, heading upward with rescue equipment. Even in his final moments, Welles Crowther was climbing toward danger — not away from it.

Today, his red bandana has become a symbol of courage, selflessness, and humanity in the face of horror. His mother once said, “He went up so others could come down.”

And that’s exactly what he did.