The Red Bandanna

Rinaldi describes the titular red bandanna as small but mighty. “Twenty-two inches along any side, four ounces in your hand, barely enough weight to notice. Polyester and cotton, dyed and printed” (5); the bandanna holds meaning and memory far beyond its simple shape: “Fear and strength. Smoke and blood . . . The sacrifice given, and the salvation granted” (5).

Welles Remy Crowther is born on May 17, 1977 in New York City to Jeff and Allison Crowther who name their son for his great uncle Henry Spalding Welles. Alison sees magic in her Uncle Henry, a larger-than-life character who is an expert fisherman (he designed fishing lures used by President Eisenhower) and marksman (he beat Annie Oakley in a shooting contest)—and who takes “a bold and unpredicted line through life” (7). Alison and Jeff hope their new son will follow in these footsteps.

Alison grows up Scarsdale, New York, and attends Wheaton College in Massachusetts, during which time she meets Jeff. Jeff’s father, journalist Bosley Crowther, is one of the New York Times’s most celebrated film critics. Jeff gets kicked out of Clark University, does a tour in the Navy, and returns to college at NYU. His first date with Alison is “a smashing success” (9), and both immediately sense they’ll get married. Alison’s intuition tells her that “there was something else that was going to make this an important day for our family . . .” (10). The day of their first date is September 11.

After college, Alison gets a job at Rockefeller University doing radioactive research on methadone, a therapy for heroin addiction. Jeff works as a banker. He and Allison marry in May 1971 and move just north of New York City. In 1976 Alison quits her job “to avoid any further exposure to the radioactivity in her lab” (11). She gets pregnant, and in 1977 they welcome Welles into their world.

Welles is a brave and energetic child, sometimes laughing and playing tug-of-war with the family dog until both are exhausted. From a young age, Welles knows he wants to be a fireman. His father Jeff, as a teen, spent two summers as a volunteer fireman in Martha’s Vineyard. In 1985, Jeff returns to duty, this time with Upper Nyack’s Empire Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 (16). 

One Sunday morning in 1984, Welles, getting dressed for church, notices his dad’s pocket square handkerchief and asks if he can have one, too. Jeff puts a white handkerchief in Welles's jacket pocket: “that’s for show” (21). Then he offers Welles a red bandanna: “‘This,’ said Jeff, ‘is for blow’” (21), meaning to blow his nose. Jeff folds it neatly and puts it in Welles’s back pocket.

Welles often accompanies his father to the Empire fire department, where he helps polish the fire truck. His red bandanna comes in handy; it can “wipe away sweat and dirt, or clean up a mess, or keep the hair out of his eyes. Or to polish up a bumper” (21). Welles is loved by the firemen for his dedication and hard work.

As he grows and begins to play sports, “Welles epitomized the try-hard guy, the striver, the kid wringing out whatever ability he has through practice and will” (23). He teaches himself to skateboard and plays football, hockey, and lacrosse. One year, his Pop Warner football team goes undefeated. A very hard worker and dedicated team player, Welles instinctively knows that “a good whole allows everyone, the good and the not as good, to get better” (24).

For his 11th birthday, Welles has a sleepover party. Late that night, the boys sneak across town to their old elementary school, climb onto the roof of the multi-purpose room, and collect some of “the lost tennis balls, baseballs, rubber balls, and footballs thrown errantly across its space” (27). Welles later confesses the hijinks to his father, “understanding that this was his first experience with peer pressure and its powers, and ashamed for having caved in to it” (27). Welles offers to accept two months with no TV; his dad gives him two weeks.

Shorter than his classmates, Welles gets picked on by a bully, and one day the bully takes a swing at him. Welles promptly beats up the bully. “‘Don’t ever start a fight,’ Jeff had told his son years before. ‘But if one starts, be sure you finish it’ (30).

Welles grows into a fine athlete, despite his short stature, and honors student. In high school, he dresses in polo shirts, rather than the plaid fashion of the time, and drives a beat-up old van. Sometimes he’s mocked or pranked, but he takes the teasing in good humor.

Welles plays varsity hockey. At right wing, his moves are quick and elegant, but he’s passed over as a team captain. He asks the coach what he’s doing wrong; the coach answers, “You’re a leader by example. But you can do much more” (37). Welles promptly begins engaging with his teammates, encouraging and cajoling them to play with greater intensity. Within weeks, the coach makes him third team captain. The team goes 10 and two in league play. By his senior year, Welles is helping new players achieve their first scores by working together to outflank the opponent’s goalie. The team now plays against A-league teams and finishes at six and five with two ties. “With the red bandanna tied around his head, worn beneath his helmet in every game, Welles was one of the section’s leading scorers” (39).

At 16, Welles trains for and becomes a junior firefighter at Empire Hook and Ladder and works his first fire alongside his dad. That fire engulfs a house overlooking the Hudson River that belongs to poet and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison; while the house is lost, Morrison’s priceless manuscripts are saved. On the way home, Jeff asks Welles how he feels: “the smile through the grime was answer enough” (42).

A friend, Lee Burns, remembers one day in high school when Welles is talking to a beautiful girl, trying to get her to agree to go on a date, and his fire alarm goes off: “He’s gone. We’re having a good time, and that alarm goes off. He went to Superman mode and just went to the call” (45).

Another time, Lee is about to get into a fistfight in the crowded high school hallway with Wykeme Corker, a school bully, when Welles puts a hand on Lee’s shoulder and says calmly, “Think of everything you have to lose. This guy has nothing to lose” (46). Lee recalls, “I had this peace come over me. […] Almost immediately, I could feel my hands releasing, they weren’t clenched anymore” (46). Lee walks away from the fight. Wykeme later does time for assault with a knife and dies at 33 from a fight. Lee believes Welles saved him from a life-changing moment. “If he had not said something to me […] I would not be sitting [here] today. I would not be the parent of my daughter. I would not be a lot of things” (47).

Welles attends Boston College, where he enjoys his classes, his friends, and lacrosse. At a first-year party, a drunk student walks in, harasses Welles because he’s short, then grabs him, whereupon Welles beats him up, but breaks his own hand in the process. By senior year, Welles has finally grown to 5’ 10” and 180 pounds. One winter night during Welles’s senior year, ice forms on the grass next to his dorm, and on a dare, he skates on it, completely naked, to cheers and applause.

During the summer of 1997 Welles interns at Sandler O’Neill, a small Wall Street investment bank. In 1998 Welles attends a business internship program in Spain, where he meets a fellow intern, Chuck Platz, and they hit it off. After graduating from Boston College, Welles begins work as a junior associate in the Sandler O’Neill research department. The address: Two World Trade Center, Floor 104.

Always dressed in a suit and tie at the office, Welles’s one sartorial eccentricity is the red bandanna in his back pants pocket. Sometimes it sits folded on his desk; sometimes it’s a cause of playful ribbing. But Welles always has it with him. Co-worker Natalie McIver recalls that, now and then, “Welles would reach for the bandanna on his desk or in his pocket, lift it above his head, and wave it in the air. He would say, ‘This is where the magic comes from’” (66).

A friend who visits him at work says that Welles seems to like his job as much for its location high up in a skyscraper—the building swaying slightly in the wind—as for the work’s challenges.

In September 2000, Welles moves from a New Jersey rental to one in Manhattan’s West Village, sharing the space with his friend from Spain, Chuck, who now works at a Midtown asset management firm. Chuck recalls that “it took two of the four paychecks we got a month to pay the rent” (71), but it was worth it.

Welles and Chuck develop ideas for starting a business together, but Welles also thinks about applying to become a New York City fireman. Already he knows a few who got their start as Empire Hook and Ladder volunteers. He and his father attend an afternoon cruise on the New York City Fire Department’s Marine One fireboat, hosted by Lieutenant Harry Wanamaker, himself an Empire alumnus.

Despite landing a coveted promotion to the lucrative Sandler O’Neill trading desk, Welles itches for something else. He confesses to his dad that he wants to join the FDNY. He knows it will take years to get an acceptance, and he plans to continue at Sandler O’Neill. He promises to “save all my bonuses, and save as much money as I can” (82).

Welles’s mentor at Sandler O’Neill is Angelo Mangia. The two get on well. Angelo leaves the firm in 2001 for a position on Long Island, but he and Welles stay in touch. Angelo drops hints that Welles could join him at his suburban company, but Welles prefers city life, saying, “I don’t know where I’m going to be. I just know I’m going to be part of something big” (90).

On September 9, 2001, Welles’s parents visit him for dinner in the Village. Alison remembers noticing the red bandanna in Welles’s back pocket. She asks, “Welles, are you still carrying that thing?” Her son replies, “Of course, I still carry it . . . Absolutely” (92).