On my 16th birthday, my dad gave me a red bandana.
He told me the story of a man named Welles Crowther who was on the 74th floor of the World Trade Center when the planes hit on 9/11.
When everyone else ran down, he ran up.
Welles found survivors on the 78th floor, put the most injured woman on his back, and led the rest down the stairs to safety. After they were safe, he ran back up some unknown number of times.
In the days after 9/11, survivors kept talking about "the man in the red bandana" who saved them. No one knew who he was.
As the NYT began to publish some of these stories, his family found them and knew immediately it was Welles.
When Welles was 6, his dad gave him a red bandana that he carried with him ever since. When he was 16, he became a volunteer firefighter. After his death, his dad found a partially-complete FDNY job application in his apartment.
Six months after 9/11, Welles's body was found at Ground Zero alongside dozens of FDNY firefighters at the makeshift command center they assembled in the lobby of the South Tower before it collapsed.
If you stop by the 9/11 memorial in NYC, you'll still find a red bandana at Welles' name.