President Trump posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom to Welles Crowther, a volunteer firefighter who saved up to 18 people’s lives during 9/11.
“Today we also remember another hero of 9/11. After the plane hit the south tower, a group of people on the 78th floor were trapped with broken bones, charred skin and eyes and lungs filled with black smoke. Death was all about them. It was certain they were sure they were going to die. Then suddenly a rescuer appeared. They call him the man in the red bandana,” Trump said.
“He’s the man in the red bandana. He had found the only stairwell that barely survived. The stairwells were all knocked down. You couldn’t get by. Impassable,” he added. “He found an opening in one of the stairwells, and the impact was so great there was no other way down but this one little opening, this one little hole. And [he] traveled down from the 104th floor to look for those trapped and dying.”
Trump explained that Crowther “just did things that people said were not even imaginable because they knew they were dead. They said, ‘we’re goners.’ One guy was screaming, ‘We’re goners! We’re goners!’ He didn’t know those he helped and, nor who would have known, but he willingly made all of these trips up and down, up and down, up and down, over and over again, saving life after life.”
Crowther received the red bandana from his father, President Trump added. “He probably knew something about his son. When asked why he always kept it, Welles replied ‘with this red bandana, I’m going to change the world. I’m going to change the world with this bandana.’ Little did he know, on September 11th Welles saved many, many people before losing his own life in the South Tower lobby,” he said. Crowther ultimately lost his life in the tower. “When the building came down, he was in the lobby and that building came down, thousands of tons of steel.”
Crowther’s mother, Alison, and sister, Paige, accepted the honor on his behalf.
