“If You Can Help Others, Do So”

When Welles Crowther was a boy, his father stuck a folded, white handkerchief in Welles’ top coat pocket and said, “This one is for show.” Welles’ dad then gave him a red bandana for his hip pocket and instructed, “This one is for blow!” Welles kept a red bandana with him for the rest of his life.

He wore it as a junior firefighter; under his ball cap and hockey helmet through high school; and later when he played lacrosse at Boston College. When he got a job as an equities trader, he stuck it in his back pocket and took it to Wall Street. He took it with him to work on the morning of September 11, 2001 to his desk on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

The South Tower was the second building struck that morning, the jetliner slicing through the…