Jane Lerner

jlerner@lohud.com

Editor's note: This story originally published in The Journal News on June 10, 2002, under the headline "Bandanna links acts of courage." At the opening of September 11 Memorial & Museum Thursday, President Obama evoked the memory of the Rockland man and his red bandanna.

It was a habit he picked up from his father and maintained until the last day of his life.

Welles Crowther always carried a red bandanna in his back pocket.

He had it with him during his years at Nyack High School, friends at Boston College noticed it and fellow volunteer firefighters at Empire Hook & Ladder in Upper Nyack teased him about it.

The red bandanna was tucked in his pocket the morning of Sept. 11 when the 24-year-old equities trader set out for his office at Sandler O'Neill & Partners on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center.

And it was the red bandanna that helped identify Crowther as the rescuer who saved countless people trapped on the top floors of the burning south tower that morning before losing his own life.

A man, a bandanna tied around his face, stepped out of the swirling clouds of smoke and crushing debris high up in the burning tower and led groups of wounded to safety, survivors recall.

"He spoke with such authority," recalled Judy Wein, who encountered the man on the rubble-strewn 78th floor. "He was calm, he showed us where the stairs were, he found a fire extinguisher, he carried people down the stairs and then went back up to help more."

No one knew his name at the time, but the people who survived those harrowing moments between the plane crash and the building collapse said they would never forget him.

"That face is always in my mind," said Ling Young, one of a handful of people who escaped from the floors above the plane's impact. "He saved my life."

Alison Crowther suspected her son was at the center of the mystery as soon as she began hearing reports of survivors ushered to safety by a man in a red bandanna.

"It made sense," she said. "All the pieces of the puzzle came together."

Welles, with his years of training as a volunteer firefighter, assumed the role of rescuer to help the injured and trapped reach safety following the terrorist attack on New York City, his family suspected.

Survivors who encountered the man in the red bandanna that morning confirmed their hunch.

Alison Crowther contacted Young and sent her a recent picture of Welles.

"As soon as I saw it, I knew it was him," said Young, a New Jersey resident who is still undergoing treatment for burns she suffered. She met Alison Crowther for lunch last week at a Manhattan restaurant.

"You don't forget a face like that," Young said.

Confirmation that their son was the civilian who came to the rescue of people trapped beyond the reach of emergency workers has brought comfort to the bereaved Upper Nyack family.

"He looked the devil straight in the eye that day and fought with all the strength and fiber of his being," Alison Crowther said. "He died saving others."

Welles and his father, Jefferson Crowther, made a habit of keeping a bandanna with them at all times. Jefferson Crowther favored blue; his son, red.

"The monogrammed hanky is for show," the pair would joke. "The bandanna is for blow."

Like his father, Welles became a volunteer firefighter as soon as he was old enough to qualify.

He joined Empire Hook & Ladder in Upper Nyack when he was 16 and spent countless hours learning to be a firefighter at the Rockland Fire Training Center in Ramapo.

"When we were cleaning down the truck or working, I'd see him wipe his brow with the red bandanna," said Dave Low, a longtime family friend and fellow Empire volunteer.

Welles put his heart into his firefighting training, Low said.

By all accounts, he used that expertise on Sept. 11.

After the first plane hit the north tower that morning, he called friends and left a message for his mother that he was going to evacuate.

That should have given the strapping former lacrosse and hockey player enough time to reach safety, his parents reasoned.

They didn't know his fate until his body was recovered in March. No sign of the bandanna was found.

Puzzled officials told the Crowthers that Welles was found on the ground in the south tower lobby - one of only two civilians in a staging area where the bodies of numerous firefighters and emergency workers were recovered.

"Welles did what he did out of his sense of duty as a firefighter," Alison Crowther said. "He was not Welles Crowther, equities trader, that day. He was Welles Crowther, firefighter."

Survivors recall the hellish scene on the 78th floor where they encountered the man in the red bandanna.

Judy Wein had made her way from her Aon Corp. office on the 103rd floor to the 78th, which had a lobby and a bank of elevators that workers took to lower levels.

She reached the 78th floor just as the plane hit.

"The impact was so strong that I was thrown so far - I don't even know how far - but it felt like I was airborne forever," the Queens resident said.

She landed on her arm, shattering it. Seconds later, a shock wave threw her back in the other direction, this time breaking her ribs and puncturing her lung.

She battled unconsciousness and woke to a hellish scene.

Corpses were everywhere. Severed limbs littered the floor. She recognized co-workers hopelessly pinned beneath steel beams and chunks of debris. Flaming embers were falling all around.

"People were lying there dead," Wein recalled. "Some were sitting up, dazed, some were whimpering."

She and small groups of people who survived the plane's initial impact made their way to an area that seemed better lighted.

"We didn't know where we were. We didn't know what to do," she said. "Then Welles shows up out of nowhere."

The man had his nose and mouth covered with the bandanna as protection against the smoke and dust.

He pointed out the stairs and issued instructions.

"Anyone who can walk, walk down the stairs. Anyone who can walk and help someone else, help. There are people here you cannot help anymore, so don't try to," survivors recall Crowther telling them.

He accompanied Wein, a woman with one broken arm and one burned arm, and a man with a severed arm to the 61st floor. From there, he instructed them to continue down the stairs.

"I have to leave you here," he said. "I have to go back up and help others."

Wein recalled seeing a fire extinguisher lying against a wall.

"It was a strange place for a fire extinguisher," she said.

She didn't know at the time that Ling Young had left the fire extinguisher there minutes before, when the man in the red bandanna accompanied her downstairs before going back up to the 78th floor.

Young was also dazed and injured after the plane struck. She had made her way to the 78th floor from her office at the state Department of Taxation and Finance on the 86th floor.

"My glasses filled with blood, I wiped them so I could see," she said. "There was nothing but dead people. My head was numb. I was afraid to move. We didn't know what to do."

Then the authoritative young man she later identified as Crowther appeared to show her the way.

The man removed the bandanna from his face on the way down, so Young got a good look at him.

He instructed her to carry a fire extinguisher in case they encountered flames, she recalled.

Along with Young, Crowther also accompanied a tall, thin, middle-aged white man. He carried a tall, thin, light-skinned black woman on his back.

Young does not know if either of those two victims made it out of the building alive.

Crowther left Young's small group around the 61st floor, telling them he had to go back for more people.

It is unclear how many trips up and down Crowther made or how many lives he saved that day before losing his own.

For the people he saved, identifying the man in the red bandanna has been bittersweet.

"He saved so many people, but he didn't save himself," said Young, who has a 24-year-old son.

When Young met with Alison Crowther last week, she looked through a family album showing a smiling youngster fishing with his grandfather, an impish schoolboy dressed for Halloween, a beaming brother with his two younger sisters, Honor and Paige, on Christmas morning.

"His whole life was ahead of him," Young said. "It's such a tragedy."

She embraced Alison Crowther and "thanked her for raising such a wonderful son." Both women recalled the instance.

Judy Wein, who is still undergoing treatment for her injuries, also hopes to meet the Crowther family. "He was a hero for doing what he did," she said. "It's amazing that in this day and age someone could give of himself in a dangerous situation like that. Totally amazing."

But people who knew Welles say they aren't surprised by the feats he performed that terrible morning.

"People talk all kinds of talk," said Dave Low, a Vietnam War veteran who has known the Crowthers for years. "But when the moment of truth comes, you either do it or you don't do it. There was never any doubt in my mind that when the moment of truth came, Welles would do what needed to be done."