Cary author's debut novel features real-life 9/11 hero and a childhood keepsake that connects them
CARY, N.C. (WTVD) -- Patrick Stapleton was a pre-teen New Yorker when the towers fell on September 11, 2001.
Two years before that day, a 10-year-old Patrick stood on the sidelines of a Boston College lacrosse game - and walked away with an autographed ball from one of the team's senior players.
That player's name was Welles Crowther.
Stapleton kept the ball in a case in his childhood bedroom for years, not yet understanding the hero Crowther would become - or the lasting mark he would leave on Stapleton's life.
"I see on my dresser the ball in the case and the name that literally front and center popped out was Welles R. Crowther, 19 - his number," Stapleton said. "One of the first thoughts was I wanted to give this back to his family."
'The man in the red bandana'
Welles Crowther was 24 years old - an equities trader working on the 104th floor of the South Tower and a former volunteer firefighter from Nyack, New York - when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the building at 9:03 a.m. He called his mother minutes later to tell her he was okay.
Then he went to work.
Crowther organized and aided victims, extinguished fires and carried a woman on his back down nearly 20 floors - then went back up to help more. He is credited with saving as many as 18 lives. He was last seen heading upward with FDNY firefighters before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m.
For months after the attacks, survivors who owed him their lives knew him only as the mysterious man in the red bandana - a bandana his father had given him as a child, which he carried every day of his life.
This week, on the 25th anniversary of September 11th, his mother Allison Crowther carried that red bandana as she accepted a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom on her son's behalf.
"That's the real meaning of the red bandana," Allison Crowther said. "To be courageous, to find the good, to be the good."
A promise made, a bandana given
In 2011, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Stapleton sought out the Crowther family to return the lacrosse ball Welles had signed for him as a boy. Allison Crowther gave him something in return - a red bandana.
"It's one of my prized possessions," Stapleton said.
The gesture came with a message she delivers to everyone she presents one to.
"She tells everyone she gives a bandana to: be courageous, care for others, a hero lies in you," Stapleton said. "And that credo - the Crowther credo - stuck with me."
That day, Stapleton made a promise to spend his life telling Welles Crowther's story to anyone who hadn't heard it.
A promise kept - in 300 pages
This summer, Stapleton published his debut novel, The Last "I Love You" - and Welles Crowther is in it.
The fictional story opens with Crowther rescuing the protagonist's father from the South Tower on September 11th. Everything Crowther says and does in the book is drawn directly from the historical record. Before publishing, Stapleton sent the manuscript to Allison Crowther for her blessing. She gave it.
For Stapleton, the inclusion was never in question.
"I made a promise 15 years prior to always share his story, to always push his story to people who didn't know it," he said. "And that was my promise in action - by including him in the book in such a big way."
On the 25th anniversary, Stapleton reflected on what it means that Crowther's legacy has outlasted his years.
"He's been gone longer than he was alive," Stapleton said. "I think a lot about that. And how his legacy is still as strong as ever."
Asked what he hopes Crowther would think if he could read the novel, Stapleton didn't hesitate.
"We saw the worst of humanity on 9/11," he said. "And Welles showed us the best of humanity. I would hope he would say I honored what he did."
"The Last 'I Love You'" by Patrick Stapleton is available now wherever books are sold.
