Just minutes after United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 24-year-old Welles Crowther called his mother and calmly left a message: “Mom, this is Welles. I want you to know that I’m okay.”
Crowther worked as an equities trader at Sandler O’Neil and Partners on the 104th floor. But after that call, the former volunteer firefighter made his way to the 78th-floor sky lobby and became a hero to strangers — remembered only as “the man in the red bandana.”
Amid the smoke, chaos, and falling debris, Crowther helped injured and disoriented office workers find safety, risking his own life. Survivors recalled seeing a tall man with a red bandana covering his mouth and nose to protect against the smoke.
The 78th-floor sky lobby was an area with express elevators meant to speed trips to the ground floor. In a firm, commanding voice, Crowther led people to the stairway, urging them to help one another, while he carried an injured woman on his back. After bringing her down 15 floors, he went back up to save more people.
“Everyone who can stand, stand now,” he told survivors as he directed them toward the exit. “If you can help others, do so.”
“He is absolutely my guardian angel — no question — because without him, we would have been waiting when the building collapsed,” survivor Ling Young told CNN. Crowther is credited with saving at least a dozen lives that day.
His body was later found with firefighters in a stairwell as they headed back up the tower, carrying the “jaws of life” rescue tool.