Friday night’s football game at Boston College is the annual “Red Bandana Game.” The team will wear uniforms with a red bandana incorporated into the jerseys. The first 10,000 spectators will be given red bandanas. Others will bring their own.
The game is in honor of a BC Alumnus who died 25 years ago today in the terrorist action against the World Trade Center. None of the undergrads at the game were born when the terrorists directed the hijacked planes into the towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. But they will become more aware of the story of the Christian heroism of an alumnus who placed the lives of others before his own, a man who sacrificed his life so that others might live.
Welles Crowther, an equities trader in the World Trade Center, graduated from BC two years before his death. He had been a volunteer firefighter, as was his dad, from the age of 16. Why the bandana? His dad gave Welles a red bandana when he was six years old. It became a trademark that he carried with him at all times up to his death.
Rather than fleeing his offices on the 104th floor when the towers were attacked, he used his ever-present bandana to cover his nose and mouth as protection from smoke inhalation. The man in the red bandana, as he was called by those he saved, rescued at least eighteen people, sometimes guiding them and other times carrying them down the steps. His demeanor remained calm throughout. His name was not known until his sister saw the reports of the man in the red bandana given by those he had saved.
Welles’ body was not found until six months after the attack. It was discovered with the bodies of other dead firefighters from the NY fire department in what was a makeshift control center for rescue efforts in the lobby of the south tower that collapsed.
In two interesting side notes, a filled out application to the New York Fire Department was found among his papers. Welles was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom which President Trump presented to his mother and sister on Tuesday of this week.
Evil can be defined as ‘that which causes harm to us as humans, as persons, as members of society.” The events of 9/11 encapsulate and summarize the problem of evil with which humanity has grappled since the very beginning and with which it will grapple for all time. As we pray today, we ask ourselves if there is any reason for hope after those dreadful events of a quarter-of-a-century ago.
Any hope that emerges from the intentional actions of a group of terrorists will not be found in official pronouncements or in treading lightly around the evil they perpetrated. Hope will be found in the Christian heroism of individuals such as Welles Crowther or Father Mychal Judge.
Father Judge was the Franciscan chaplain to the New York Fire Department who died in the collapse of the South Tower as he was administering last rites to a dying firefighter. Any hope we might find as we grapple with the eternal problem of evil and suffering will only be found in the selfless action of individuals and groups who act for the sake of others. Like many of the saints Welles Crowther, Mychal Judge, and the over 300 firefighters who died that day, ignored their own needs and instincts for self-preservation so as to save the lives of others. Theirs was a Christianity of response and action.
I don’t know if the story is apocryphal. I’ve heard several versions of it but it is said that a young religious was carefully dressing an ugly, smelly, and festering leg wound. Someone who observed her said, “Sister, I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” She replied, “Neither would I.”
We are called to love and care for others as Jesus did and because He did.
Welles Crowther, Fr. Judge, and a host of NY Firefighters knew that when they acted to save others. And so, we pray . . .
Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine,
et lux perpétua lúceat eis.
Requiéscant in pace.
Amen.
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Welles Crowther, BC class of '99 Fr. Jack, SJ, MD 
The body of Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM being taken from the South Tower by firefighters. 
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