When the left wing of United Airlines Flight 175 cut through the south tower sky lobby, those who survived the impact didn’t know if there was a way out.
Then, they heard Welles Crowther’s voice. "I found the stairs," he told them.
Crowther led them to safety, turned around and climbed back into the burning tower. The 24-year-old equities trader saved as many as 18 people on his three trips to the 78th floor. He didn't survive.
For many Americans, Crowther became a symbol of heroism on 9/11.
He’s received a number of posthumous awards, and this year will be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His alma mater, Boston College, annually dedicates a football game and road race in his honor.
Today, Crowther’s story is taught to children in more than
40 states. His heroism is among the defining ways students from kindergarten through high school learn about the terror attacks.
This year’s class of high school seniors were born seven years after 9/11. Most first graders were born in 2019, almost two decades later. For them, 9/11 is a historical event, not a visceral memory.
As educators grapple with how to help the next generation understand the impact of the Sept. 11 attacks, many have come to rely on stories of courage and resilience, like Crowther’s, to make the events more tangible.
“The history is the history,” said Crowther’s mother, Alison. “I say to young people, 'This happened. It was devastating. But you can't live in fear, and you can't be controlled by fear.'”
She has helped develop a curriculum around her son’s story, called The Red Bandanna Project, a reference to the handkerchief survivors saw him wearing on 9/11. The project is aimed at encouraging students to focus on lessons from 9/11, including empathy and leadership.
“9/11 should never be forgotten or diminished in any way. It should be addressed in the schools,” Alison Crowther said. “You have to move forward.”
A hero's legacy
Like many who lost loved ones on 9/11, Welles Crowther’s family didn’t know what happened to him until his body was discovered six months after the terror attacks. Recovery workers found him lying in debris of what had been the lobby of the south tower. He was next to a group of about 10 New York City firefighters, close to the building’s exit.
They questioned why he hadn’t made it out. Then, over Memorial Day weekend in 2002, Alison Crowther found evidence of her son’s last moments. In a New York Times article, “Fighting to Live as the Towers Died,” survivors recounted receiving help from a mysterious man whose face was covered with a red bandanna, like the one her son had carried since childhood. Alison Crowther reached out to those quoted and confirmed the man was Welles.
“He kept going back up,” Alison Crowther said.
In the years after 9/11, local schools near the family's home in Nyack, New York, often asked Alison Crowther to speak about her son’s story. Boston College created a Red Bandanna 5K. Then, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, ESPN released a 13-minute documentary.
“That shot Welles – the story – all around the world,” Alison Crowther remembered.
As more letters from teachers, students, coaches and parents flooded her mailbox, she decided to create a curriculum about 9/11 and her son’s heroism.
For the 25th anniversary, the family’s nonprofit, the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust, has revamped it. The new lessons are free, digitally downloadable for teachers and focused on emotional learning, said Kevin Holbrook, project director of the Red Bandanna Project.
It includes short lessons for elementary to middle school students on such topics as teamwork, the “power of one” and caring for others. The exercises ask students to reflect on Welles Crowther’s story and think of other examples they’ve seen of people helping others. One middle school assignment asks students why someone like Welles might show love and compassion to a stranger.
“What makes Welles' story so powerful for young people is that he wasn't a historical figure from another century. He was a young man,” Holbrook said. “He was an ordinary person who made extraordinary choices when it mattered.”
Teaching the lesson of resilience
Crystal Bozigian teaches at North Providence High School in Rhode Island, one room over from the classroom where she watched live coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks. When she first started as a history teacher 20 years ago, all her students had similarly vivid memories of where they were when they saw the towers fall. Some of her students today get the date of the attacks wrong; they don’t know why it’s referred to as 9/11.
“That maybe is a piece or a sign that truly it's not part of their history,” Bozigian, 41, said.
Still, every year on the anniversary when she begins her lesson, Bozigian said, she sees a quizzical gleam in their eyes.
Bozigian shares memories, then plays the ESPN documentary on Welles Crowther. It shows United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the south tower and features harrowing firsthand accounts from survivors Crowther helped save.
But it also focuses on what Crowther’s red bandanna has come to represent: selflessness.
Bozigian asks her students if their generation has experienced any defining moments similar to 9/11. Most point to the COVID-19 pandemic: the shutdowns, the isolation, seeing the death toll rise in news media accounts. That lesson, she said, helps them understand collective trauma and grief. She also asks them to write essays about people who remind them of Crowther.
“I don’t like to spend that day in the dark doldrums,” Bozigian said.
“There's the morbid curiosity to watch all the highlights, the newsreels, the documentaries that have painted the terror and the fear. And that's all important,” she added. “I just think that our American story ... has always been one of heroism and resilience.”
A new generation, a different world
For Katie Jeffers, a high school teacher in Catoosa County, Georgia, Crowther’s story serves as an entry point into a discussion about the national unity that blossomed after 9/11. Most of Jeffers' students have only memories of a politically divided America.
“I wish that the students that I teach nowadays could witness the solidarity,” Jeffers, 36, said. “I tell them, you can be proud of America and not agree with other people's politics.”
Jeffers had just begun sixth grade in 2001. She remembers fixating on the terror attacks for months. She watched every news clip she could find, and read as much as possible about the victims and first responders. Amid the horror, Jeffers said, she felt proud of her country’s reaction.
“It just awakened something inside of me, like this just huge, immense amount of patriotism,” she said.
After college, Jeffers taught elementary school for a few years. While trying to find ways to pass down those lessons from 9/11 to her second-grade class, Jeffers stumbled on the picture book Welles Crowther’s sister, Honor Crowther Fagan, wrote.
“I would just kind of start out by gathering them on the carpet and saying 'It's a sad day because some sad things happened, but we're going to focus on the good guys,'” Jeffers said.
Then, she would give each one a red bandanna to help them relate to the story.
Years later, some of those students found their way into her high school classroom, and told her they still had their bandannas on their nightstands.
“That means more to me than any other type of lesson,” Jeffers said.
Gone longer than he was alive
Welles Crowther has now been gone longer than he was alive.
For Alison Crowther, the 25th anniversary marks an especially somber milestone. Still, she said, she takes comfort knowing her son’s memory lives on through the young people learning from his example.
"I just would like people to understand that Welles was such a beautiful soul, as were so many people lost on 9/11,” she said. “Embrace the preciousness and the gift of our lives here on this earth and just work every day to bring good into the world. That's my wish and my hope for people of all ages.”
Karissa Waddick covers America's 250th anniversary, looking at how historical events have shaped our nation. She can be reached at kwaddick@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The 9/11 story America's teachers keep telling
