Welles Crowther was born in 1977, the oldest of three kids. From his youngest days, he worshiped his father Jefferson, a banker and longtime volunteer firefighter in the hamlet of Nyack, New York. Jefferson had a habit of always carrying a clean handkerchief or bandana with him, and one Sunday morning, Welles saw his dad, while getting ready for church, wrapping a comb in a red bandana and putting them in his hip pocket. To Welles, that bandana came to represent everything that being a man was about, so he was no doubt pleased as punch when his father presented him with his very own bandana at the age of six.
That bandana became Wellesâ trademark and talisman. He wore it every day, including under his uniforms when he was playing sports. At sixteen, he joined his fatherâs volunteer fire company, the Empire Hook and Ladder. A talented athlete, he attended Boston College as a lacrosse player. The bandana followed, always tucked under his jersey.
Welles was a pretty good student, too, graduating with honors and a degree in economics. Like a fair percentage of guys to go to BC, he had dreams of being a fire chief or an FBI agent. Those jobs are few and far between, though, so Welles settled for being an equities trader for Sanders OâNeill, joining their offices on the 104th floor of the South Tower in the World Trade Center.
On September 11, 2001, nine minutes after United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower between floors 77 and 85 at 9:03 a.m., Crowther called his mother from his office, leaving the message, “Mom, this is Welles. I wanted you to know that I’m okay.” He then started making his way down. That should have been the end of it for Welles â a harrowing story, a narrow escape, a tale to tell his colleagues and kids for decades.
But he had other ideas.
In the 78th floor sky lobby, a group had been waiting to evacuate when the second plane hit. Among those who survived the initial impact was state worker Ling Young, who was badly burned. The group could find no exits and were resigned to their fates when a man emerged from the smoke, put the woman on his back, and led them to the only extant stairway seventeen floors down to safety.
Then he went back up.
Encountering another group of walking wounded back on the 78th floor, the man calmly put out fires and treated the wounded, before announcing âEveryone who can stand, stand now. If you can help others, do so.” He led this group to safety as well, before ascending the stairs a second time.
No one ever saw him again.
Wellesâ body was finally recovered in March 2002, alongside those of several firefighters and emergency workers bunched in a makeshift command post in the South Tower lobby. Speculation is that, firefighter to the last, Welles had stuck around to assist FDNY until the building collapsed on them.
In May 2002, the New York Times published several stories of survivors of the 9/11 attacks. A few of them took on a remarkable similarity: a mysterious stranger who acted with quiet yet authoritative purpose, leading victims to safety instead of certain death. But they couldnât recognize him, because he was wearing a red bandana over his nose and mouth.
Wellesâ mother Allison had never heard from her son after that phone call on a Tuesday morning in September. But reading the accounts in the Times, she suddenly knew.
Later, Allison met personally with several of the people her son saved, and then word got out. As many as eighteen people were still alive because one twenty four year-old man had sacrificed his lucrative career, his future, and his life so that they wouldnât perish that morning.
Wellesâ alma mater hosts a memorial 5k race every spring, and every fall, the football team has a Red Bandana night, with specially-themed uniforms.
Wellesâ sister published a childrenâs book, The Man in the Red Bandana, about her brotherâs actions on September 11. A documentary based on the book came out in 2017, narrated by Gwenyth Paltrow.
One of Wellesâ bandanas (pictured above) is on display at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City.
In 2006, Welles Crowther was made an honorary firefighter by the FDNY.
On May 22, 2026, President Donald Trump announced that Welles Crowther would be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which took place on September 8, 2026.
Welles Crowther has now been dead longer than he was alive. But hopefully his name will continue to be revered for decades.
Toxic masculinity, you say? I don’t feel quite so bad about dragging this over from the dead thread.
If it could be âprovenâ that Jefferson forced his slave concubine(s) to abort their tainted offspring, would that make the lefty academics love him? Inquiring minds, and all that.
Abortions are only good if you are aborting white babies.
One drop counts.
Black genocide.
Not true, Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood (PP) specifically to target people she and other progressives deemed “inferior”. She specifically used black ministers in something PP referred to as the Negro Project to get black people on board with terminating their pregnancies. To this day, most PP clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. This is not a happy accident. Progressives have always been racist.
I remember many stories about him.
Bonus:
https://medium.com/@amandaskasman/the-lie-that-tainted-america-s-greatest-9-11-hero-f6e646f825c6
TLDR – fake survivor that he was supposed to have saved.
Wow, never heard of that. What a nut job.
Same, crazy story.
Thatâs wild.
LOL
You’re the victim of the ridiculous woke BS, idiot. Stop talking like them and talk like a normal human being instead.
How can minorities feel safe enrolling at a university if cafeteria photos don’t include people who look like them?
I mentioned it on 9/11 but ESPN’s segment on Wells is extremely well done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S77KYbkmjwc
It’s always dusty whenever I watch it.
The Red Bandana Game was actually on 9/11 for the first time this year, playing Rutgers.
BC isn’t particularly good but managed to pull off a win – emotions were surely high all around.
That was good. I had never seen or heard of this story until this year.
I have many memories of that day. I wasn’t anywhere near downtown, but I walked many miles uptown to stay at a relative’s apartment as I couldn’t easily get across the Hudson.
My most vivid memory was getting home the next day. Trains were finally running and I wound up at Penn Station right as a train was departing. I walked into and on the train. Conductors were coming through the cars and explicitly saying no tickets were being collected. A first and only for me.
I got to my town and saw the parking lot 3/4 full of cars and thought OMG – how many of these people aren’t coming back? Fortunately, most had my problem. In a town of 20k we lost 8 residents.
I walked from Wall Street to Astoria. And repeated the exercise for that big blackout a couple years later. It seemed like one thing after another in those days.
I was not familiar with this guy’s story, very powerful stuff.
I cannot say this is something I would do never being in anything remotely similar. Help people going down yes, going back up twice I doubt it.
Great story and thanks for writing. I am ashamed that I wasn’t aware of Welles Crowther (or even the “man in the red bandana” story) until this year.
While I watched a bunch of Letterkeney, I never watched the spinoff sitcom Shoresy and I know nothing of hockey, a main focus of the spinoff. Still youtube occasionally recommends clips to me. As in letterkenny there is a lot of chirping, e.g. banter trash talk ball busting etc. I got this clip and though there are two show characters but is seems one is a cameo from an actual retired player named Sean Avery. My question is is this guy well known among hockey fans or just a random player?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZGFs96GIDM
He’s a well known hockey asshole.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/local/nhl_star_apologizes_for_calling_elisha_cuthbert__sloppy_seconds_/1845904/
Such an asshole he got a rule named after him – the Avery Rule
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMmQYC6_cWI
Brodeur is responsible for the trapezoid, but they can’t even name it after him.
Wow, how could you make ZWAK care less about a bunt of men who play a women’s field sport?
I know, irritating Canadian TV shows!
I looked him up. Not well known, but seems an interesting man, namely a Grade-A dick “During his career in the National Hockey League (NHL), he played left wing for the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, and Dallas Stars, gaining recognition for controversial and disrespectful behaviour both on and off the ice. His agitating playing style led to multiple teams waiving him and to having a contract terminated. He led the league in penalty minutes twice, during the 2003â04 and 2005â06 NHL seasons.
After retiring in 2012, Avery focused full-time on working in the creative industry. He has worked in fashion as an intern at Vogue magazine, as a model, as an actor, and as a restaurateur. Avery’s memoir, Ice Capades: A Memoir of Fast Living and Tough Hockey, was published by Blue Rider Press in 2017.”
—
Huh: “Avery’s acting roles include as Bob Dill in The Rocket (2005), and would make appearances in several Christopher Nolan films including Tenet (2020), Oppenheimer (2023), and The Odyssey (2026).”
—
Made fun of teammates for a lisp and is classy: ‘”I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don’t know what that’s about, but enjoy the game tonight.” At the time, two of Avery’s ex-girlfriends were dating fellow NHL players: actress Elisha Cuthbert was dating Flames defenceman (and future husband) Dion Phaneuf, while model Rachel Hunter was dating Kings centre Jarret Stoll”
====
Elisha was a babe, to be fair. Also, there must be more behind this: “In November 2014, Avery was set to appear in Negative Is Positive, an off-Broadway play by Christy Smith-Sloman, but quit two days before opening night. According to reports, Avery had a meltdown after a stage manager offered him pizza, which he misinterpreted as an insult.”
Ya know. I anticipate hockey players to be far thicker skinned. To be further fair, I anticipate most people who are professional-grade competitive to be quick dickish about ‘losing’ in any capacity, hence why they do it so infrequently (at the sport they’re paid to do because of their talent and drive).
Who will save the fair damsel?
The threats are not only external. Along with Putinâs Russia and Maga America, the rise of the far right in Europe completes a triangle of threats. The far right is a threat to liberal democracy. But by instigating internal division and pushing for disintegration, it also supports the divide-and-rule designs of predatory external powers, representing a challenge to Europeâs independence and sovereignty. It has taken the earthquake of the AfDâs successes in German regional elections for von der Leyen to acknowledge openly that Europeâs threats are also homegrown. Better late than never.
The EU is in dire peril. Who will save her?
Canada?
At this point we’ll have to rely on Poland to drive out the islamic invaders again. Then someone will have to hang all the Eurocrats.
STEVE SMITH SAVE DAMSEL, AND BY SAVE DAMSEL MEAN….
Sounds like Sand Smith is already taking care of Europa.
The far right is a threat to liberal democracy.
Does that make Zelenskyy far-right now? FDR didn’t cancel elections.
Xi Jinping, duh.
The attacked state would activate the protocol, an emergency European Council would convene, and the commission and EU high representative would propose responses, including evacuation and medical support, stockpiling and energy security, economic coercion, military mobility and more. The mechanism could extend to like-minded non-EU partners, starting with Canada, Norway, the UK and Ukraine. The proposal to offer Canada associate membership, while still undefined, can be read in this light as well.
And then would arise such a clamor of tut-tut-ing as to shake the very foundations.
It’ll be like the UN, but even more toothless!
On paper, it all makes sense. In practice, it is hard to see such a mechanism operating seamlessly, let alone rapidly, given the EUâs organisational complexities, its slowness to act and its internal divisions.
Something something independence and sovereignty.
So, since I haven’t heard anything about the most recent clock stabilization bill, I have to assume it never became law.
đď¸
The Senate still has time to screw us but hopefully the bill dies.
I wonder why linux includes the middle finger emoji but microsoft left it out. đď¸
I just want the changes to stop.
The olds got their wish to keep a sliver of standard time in the calendar. Because in their 70s they are waiting at the bus stop to go to grade school in the dark.
I have no fucking interest in having the sun come up after 8:30 am during the winter. And no, when you work for megacorp, you don’t get to pick your own hours to work. The workday follows the clock, not the sun.
Dosent matter with mega corp.
Cause Iâm guessing 99% of the time youâre in a building with bad lighting sun or no sun outside.
Outrage is erupting after a 22-year-old who runs into BURNING BUILDINGS as a volunteer firefighter was told he isn’t qualified to be a paid firefighter…
…because he was HOMESCHOOLED.
Perhaps flyover country, here Nebraska, is learning from its coastal betters.
https://x.com/mattvanswol/status/2101839010897314024?s=20
Kids to smart to have a government job.
My youngest son was homeschooled (along with a wide variety of public and private education experiences). It is INSANE that many states make it difficult to take GED (or equivalent) – and some even require you to be 19 (looking at you MN) to avoid kids leaving HS and taking the test. Iowa and Nebraska both have several hurdles.
I breathed a sigh of relief once he was accepted to college (he is an actuary now) because I was concerned that there could be places where lack of HS diploma/official transcripts could be an employment or opportunity hurdle.
In my day getting a GED in NJ was pretty easy to do. No idea now.
My oldest brother dropped out the day after he was 17, to join the Army. A year or two later he was stationed in Hawai’i, took a couple courses, GED’d in the same class (’48) from a school in Honolulu with the same name as his high school (Roosevelt) in Mpls.
You know what the Canadian economy really needs? To give EU bureaucrats power over it. That’ll surely jumpstart their economy.
The Canadian Economy needs to disenfranchise Quebec and nuke Ottowa.
maybe Canada can help fund building infrastructure in eastern europe.
Aren’t they already doing that in Ukraine, or did you have a certain Eastern European backwater in mind?
WH Fraud task force ejected nearly 760,000 people from the ACA (Obamacare) exchange due to ineligibility – the fraud and grift is insane.
Criminals, largely brokers and agents, took advantage of this enhanced assistance and began enrolling enrollees and switching them to different plans without their knowledge. Some were unaware of the changes.
This was good chunk of it.
https://www.applevalleynewsnow.com/news/politics/national-politics/white-house-fraud-task-force-will-remove-more-than-760-000-obamacare-enrollees-some-of/article_3ad972ed-7ca5-5f6c-98d8-a2c793b9ca4b.html
So cruel just like when Republicans kicked people off Medicaid because they allowed the waiver of eligibility verification to expire.
Waiting for them to go to jail now, right? Right?
Because in their 70s they are waiting at the bus stop to go to grade school in the dark.
Nonsense. They’re headed down to the barn to milk the cows and hitch up the team for plowing.
Youâre going to summon FourScore if youâre not carefull.
My barn chores came in the afternoon. Feeding, milking, cleaning.
I’m grateful now to have had those opportunities. I didn’t like it then, I’m glad that I was able to take advantage of other opportunities. My kids have no idea what life without TV and other luxuries they have enjoyed.
My son is an addict. He watches football (he’s a UTX grad), regardless of who is playing. He’d watch high school junior varsity if it was the only thing on.
He needs his Saturday College fix, starting early with East Coast highlights/pregame. Then winds down after midnight with the synopsis. Start’s Sunday, o’course, Monday, hopes for a Wed/Thurs/Fri game of some sort.
Somehow he works from home, self-employed, along with his addiction.
Did I mention that I liked school, riding the bus in the dark was the norm. School was warm, easy, friends. I washed dishes in the school cafeteria for a couple years. The requirement was to have a 4th period study hall, there were 2-3 eating times and the cafeteria was in the girls’ gym. Anyway, the cooks ensured that about 10 teenagers didn’t get hungry. We got paid .30 cents an hour, 2 hours a day. My folks liked it ’cause no lunch money required plus we earned our way.
It was more good training…
Wage thievery
DoorDash will pay $131.5 million to settle claims that it underpaid delivery workers in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Tuesday.
The agreement, which officials descibed as the largest worker settlement in city history, also requires the company to submit to a new monitoring system to ensure compliance with delivery worker pay laws in the city.
——-
âWhile these mistakes werenât intentional, that doesnât make them okay. We pride ourselves on operational excellence at DoorDash â and this was not excellent, nor was it acceptable. Dashers should be paid in full, on time, every time. We are sorry to the Dashers we let down,â the company said.
Most of the settlement will be returned to more than 260,000 workers who were underpaid, not paid or paid late for deliveries by DoorDash, according to City Hall. The company will also pay about $16 million in civil penalties and other costs to the city.
âWhen a worker earns a wage, they deserve to be paid that wage â not tomorrow, not after a lawsuit, but on time and in full,â Mamdani said in a statement. âDoorDash underpaid more than 260,000 workers, and today we are getting that money back.â
NYC is now a (mostly) silent partner. In other news, delivery rates rise.
Delivery is already kind of peaked and on the decline I’d say. No one I know wants to use it anymore on the regular because it’s a ripoff across the board. Add to it that where I’m at in particular you get a bunch of immigrants who don’t understand the language and drop shit off wherever they feel like it regardless of how basic the instructions are and you have to ask what you’re paying for.
Most of the issue is Doordash corporate. I don’t know the exact numbers, but as I understand it they hit the restaurants with such crazy fees to be on there that they have to jack up their menu prices. Then you factor in the fees. Then the government has to get its cut because fuck you for thinking you can do something without the government getting paid. And then finally the driver.
Deport them all.
I have to think that anyone who could live in the South, especially where I am in Florida, and think that these people add anything of value. At least in Texas to Cali area they’ve got some pretty damn good Mexican food. Cubans and the other lot we get here don’t even bring that. Their food is awful.
They fuck up everything they’re involved in. They steal. They add crime everywhere they are and no amount of statistical fuckery will hide it. And to top it off they’re all on the fucking welfare and cheating the system.
I don’t understand delivery food. However, pizza made sense somehow back in the day. I do regularly order my food online and pick it up in the store. I deliver myself to the food and deliver both home!
I love how the pizza place tonight will ask me to tip their crew as I place the order online. Ha. No.
I also thought Cubans, at least in the past, were very good immigrants who legit escaped communism. I’m quite certain the last generation+ didn’t come from that cultural upbringing.
The goofiest for me was still Walmart’s Ethiopian” loading /unloading crews in the back bay. I asked one once, and she said they spoke “Eh-tee-ope,” which may or not have been true. Certainly black black, African black. A coworker said she assumed she was Haitian, but didn’t know. My immediate boss was in no way connected to their work, schedules, or anything. Easily 15-20 on my shift alone, no idea about the total. *big quizzical shrug*
Unless and until I am unable to walk or leave the house, I’m not wasting money on that shit.
If restaurants are really jacking up menu prices to cover it, THAT’S the scandal that Comdani should really be going after.
I live outside of pizza delivery distance. If I order one I pick it up.
Mamdani will soon be baking bread it would seem.
https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/2026/09/21/the-60-loaf-nyc-business-stirs-controversy-by-blaming-manhattan-rents-for-expensive-bread.html
Of course they do.
It’s a status symbol.
My stress levels were lower when I wasn’t reading glibs all day long.
Not the fault of the glibs. It’s just all the lunacy in the world that we make fun of.
It was nice to just sit in the woods and not look at a computer.
It’s the stress rays screens put out.
Did anyone at Honey Harvest relay my message to MikeS that he’s a flaming queer?
Takes his Brown to pound town on the daily?
Gayer than a bathhouse in Bangkok after fleet week?
I can only say that I did not think about you for five days.
You can’t even conceive of being First in general so…
Ha!
MikeS didn’t show, he was on vacation and was so sad to have missed the camaraderie.
I can understand that…