Let’s never forget Welles Crowther. We can celebrate his memory each college football season on the weekend of the “Red Bandana Game.”
This past week, the nation paused in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. On the anniversary, the Boston College Eagles defeated the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on the gridiron.
Photo courtesy Yahoo!
For Boston College, it was more than a game; it was about more than football. For the Eagles, this was the annual red bandana game. Every season, the Boston College football team plays a red bandana game, but this year, with the game on the anniversary of 9/11, it meant so much more.
The game is a way to honor the memory, legacy, and sacrifice of Welles Crowther, a former Boston College student and lacrosse player who lost his life during the attacks. Still, Welles didn’t die a victim; he died a hero.
On September 11, 2001, four airline flights were hijacked by terrorists. One crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. One crashed in Shanksville, PA, after the passengers took the plane back. Perhaps most well-known are the two planes that crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. That is where we find the courageous story of Welles Crowther.
Welles graduated from Boston College in 1999. By 2001, he was a volunteer firefighter and equities trader, stationed on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. In the days and weeks following the attacks, survivor reports from the World Trade Center began to mention a man with a red bandana helping others to safety and then climbing back up into the danger to try and save more.
The survivors didn’t know the name of the man who helped them to safety, but they remembered he had a red bandana. It was Welles Crowther.
Instead of fleeing to safety, Welles gathered survivors from the upper floors of the South Tower and led them down the stairs to the firefighters, who then led them to safety. However, Welles went back up again until he could no longer. Welles is credited with saving 18 lives that day, sacrificing himself in the process when the South Tower collapsed. That year, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
In 2014, Boston College began the annual Red Bandanna game to honor Welles’ memory. For the Red Bandanna Game, the Eagles wear special uniforms featuring the design of the red bandanna Welles was wearing that day. For that first Red Bandanna Game, Boston College was the underdog. Unranked, they hosted the USC Trojans, the No. 9 team in the country.
Graphic courtesy MSN
On a special night in Chestnut Hill, Boston College defeated the top-ten Trojans. Though not every Red Bandanna Game has ended in a Boston College victory, the game remains a reminder of what happened on September 11 and what it means to be a true hero.
In sports, star players are often called heroes. But that is a shallow definition of the word. In a crusade sermon preached not long after the attacks, Billy Graham said, “A person was often considered a hero if they could sink a basketball or play a chord on a guitar; now we know what true heroes are.”
Welles Crowther was a true hero. All the first responders on the scene of the attacks who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives to save others are true heroes.
The Red Bandana game is just a small way to make sure we never forget one man’s sacrifice on that fateful day.
