Twenty-five years after Welles Crowther ran toward danger inside the burning South Tower, President Donald Trump awarded the 9/11 hero the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Crowther — the 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter remembered as the “Man in the Red Bandana” — died after repeatedly helping trapped strangers escape the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
His mother, Alison, and sister, Paige, accepted the nation’s highest civilian honor on his behalf Tuesday in Washington.
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Trump presented the medal during Tunnel to Towers’ Steel Across America event on the Ellipse near the White House, where a 21-foot, 16,900-pound beam recovered from the South Tower was displayed ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
“Today we also remember another hero of 9/11,” Trump told the crowd.
He described survivors trapped high inside the South Tower after United Airlines Flight 175 struck the building — injured, surrounded by smoke and convinced they were going to die.
“Then suddenly a rescuer appeared,” Trump said.
That rescuer was Crowther.
Survivors later remembered the young man covering his face with a red bandana as he found a working stairwell, directed people toward safety, and repeatedly went back for others.
Trump said Crowther extinguished fires, helped those who could still walk and physically carried or assisted people who could not.
“He willingly made all of these trips up and down, up and down, up and down, over and over again, saving life after life,” Trump said.
Crowther is widely credited with helping save as many as 18 people before dying when the South Tower collapsed.
And the bandana that eventually made him famous had been with him since childhood.
Trump recounted how Crowther’s father, a firefighter, gave him the red bandana as a boy.
Crowther later said: “With this red bandana, I’m going to change the world.”
On Sept. 11, he did.
“In honor of his incredible bravery and all of the other countless unknown acts of heroism that day,” Trump said, it was his privilege to award Crowther the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Since May, Tunnel to Towers has transported the massive South Tower steel beam across the country as part of a nationwide commemoration of the Americans killed on 9/11 and the first responders and service members who followed them into danger.
Crowther never made it out of the South Tower.
But because he kept going back in, others did.
Watch the clip below:
On September 11, 2001, when terror struck our nation, Welles Remy Crowther did what he was raised to do: he ran toward danger and answered the call, displaying a heroism that would come to define his life. Wearing his trademark red bandana, he saved upwards of 18 lives that day… pic.twitter.com/R2H5V26iOX
— Congressman Mike Lawler (@RepMikeLawler) September 8, 2026
