Welles Remy Crowther had been rethinking his equity trading profession and was considering fire fighting. He was 24-years old. He is remembered by those he rescued as “the man in the red bandana.” He held open the stairwell door and marshaled numerous people to an escape route, carrying one injured woman 17 floors and then going back up stairs to rescue more. He died when the South Tower collapsed. In 2006, he received a posthumous title as an honorary New York City firefighter. John O’Neill, was the 49-year-old Chief of Security for the World Trade Center and a central figure in The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright’s book about the foundation and roots of al-Qaeda. As a former FBI agent in charge of counterterrorism, O’Neill was an expert on Al Qaeda and terrorism. After setting up a command post, he was last seen walking toward the South Tower.
The rest is silence.
These are Hamlet’s dying words. Is silence our eternity? The lives lost on September 11th still speak to our own. In this sense, they are not silent. Hamlet’s anguish is resurrected with each stumbling sophomore’s recitation—he need not be silent either. For the lives cut short on September 11th, we must point to the holes in the earth and sky where they once lived. We must build a better world in their ashes.
HVWP COMMONPLACE 20
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