I found out I was pregnant with my first child the week before September 11, 2001. As I watched the towers fall and felt the pain shared by all Americans that day, I lamented and feared the broken world into which I was bringing my child. But almost immediately, incredible stories emerged: the relentlessly brave first responders, the steely resolve among New Yorkers, the incredible sacrifice of the passengers on Flight 93. These heartbreaking, resilient, powerful acts brought me back to a faith where love has the last word.

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As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I have a tradition of revisiting a significant story about that fateful day. The Red Bandanna by Tom Rinaldi tells the incredible story of Welles Crowther, who was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center when the planes hit. Months after the attack his mother read an article about several survivors who reported being led out of the chaos – in one instance being carried down twenty flights of stairs – by a stranger who kept going back in to help during the tumult. The survivors did not know this man’s name… but remembered his red bandanna. With that detail Alison Crowther felt, amid so much uncertainty and pain, that perhaps the best of her son had transcended this nightmare: once as a young boy before church, Welles’ father gave him a red handkerchief – which he kept with him that day and almost every day after that. It was his calling card. Suddenly there was something besides tragedy that defined Welles’ last days, and as the pieces of his heroism came into sharper focus, his courage and sacrifice helped to provide healing to his family, his community, and even his nation.

Author Tom Rinaldi is a national correspondent at ESPN. This story is clearly very well-researched, and includes many details about the attacks, the aftermath, and the parallel stories of those who intersected with Welles. His writing style is thorough, like a news reporter, but also compelling and heartfelt:

The South Tower’s disintegration took ten seconds.

Is that the time it takes to read the last three lines, to clear a dish from the table, to enter a daydream at the traffic light? To pick something to wear today, to watch a tee shot land, to address an envelope? To order off the menu, to mix a drink, to beat an egg? To lace up a shoe, to back out of the driveway, to walk out of church?

It took ten seconds for the tower’s 750 million tons of heavy steel and concrete to drop, erased from the skyline, a sudden phantom. (p. 130)

When my boys were teenagers my husband and I took them to New York City where we visited the 911 Memorial Museum. I was thankful to have a way for them to fully appreciate the enormity of that event, and all that it revealed about the worst – and the best – of what we encounter in this life. Reading The Red Bandanna provides a similar opportunity for our full hearts to remember, grieve, honor, celebrate, and give thanks for the men and women of 9/11 – and especially the selfless and inspiring man in the red bandanna, Welles Crowther.