A banquet server at The Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary has spent more than two decades carrying a promise he made as a 10-year-old boy, and this summer he finally kept it. Patrick Stapleton's debut novel, “The Last 'I Love You',” hit shelves July 31, weaving together the story of a 9/11 hero he met as a child and the sister he lost five years ago.
Stapleton, now a Cary, North Carolina author, published the 266-page book through Kintsugi Press, according to Google Books. The novel opens with Welles Crowther, the man later known as the Man in the Red Bandana, rescuing the protagonist's father from the South Tower on September 11, as reported by ABC11 News. Stapleton drew Crowther's actions and dialogue directly from the historical record, the station notes, and he sent the completed manuscript to Crowther's mother, Allison Crowther, seeking her blessing before publication.
A Childhood Meeting That Became a Lifelong Promise
Stapleton first met Crowther in 1999, when he was just 10 years old, because his older sister Danielle served as student manager for the Boston College men's lacrosse team Crowther played on, according to News12 Rockland. At a Boston College lacrosse game, Crowther autographed a lacrosse ball for young Stapleton, who kept it in a case in his childhood bedroom for years afterward, per the station's report.
Crowther, a Nyack, New York native, was a 24-year-old equities trader working on the 104th floor of the South Tower on the morning of September 11, 2001, the station's report notes. He had trained as a junior volunteer firefighter with the Empire Hook and Ladder Company in his hometown at age 16, alongside his father, before graduating from Boston College with an economics degree in 1999, according to Wikipedia. He habitually wore a red bandana under his sports gear throughout high school and college — a bandana his father had given him as a child.
Eighteen Lives Saved and a Final Phone Call
When United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. that morning, Crowther called his mother minutes later, per the same account. He then organized and aided victims trapped inside, extinguishing fires and carrying at least one woman down nearly 20 floors to safety. He is credited with saving as many as 18 lives before he was last seen heading upward with FDNY firefighters, moments before the tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m.
Stapleton later sought out the Crowther family in 2011, telling ABC11 he wanted to return the autographed lacrosse ball rather than keep it. In exchange, Allison Crowther gave him a red bandana, and he promised her he would spend his life telling her son's story — a promise the article notes he has now fulfilled with the novel's release. Stapleton has said Crowther's legacy remains strong 25 years after his death.
A Second Tribute Woven Into the Same Pages
Beyond honoring Crowther, Stapleton also wrote the book to remember his late sister, Dr. Danielle Stapleton Richardson, a Duke Regional Hospital physician who died at age 41 in 2021 from complications of Loeys-Dietz syndrome, according to the Marfan Foundation. Richardson had been diagnosed 15 years earlier with the rare connective tissue condition. Stapleton began writing the novel in April 2025 while working as a banquet server at The Umstead Hotel and Spa, where he has been employed since June 2022, according to Cary Magazine, which notes he relocated to North Carolina with his family from the New York suburbs.
National Recognition Arrives Alongside the 25th Anniversary
The book's release landed amid a wave of national tributes to Crowther timed to the 25th anniversary of the attacks. On September 8, President Donald Trump posthumously awarded Crowther the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, during a ceremony on the White House Ellipse featuring a 21-foot South Tower steel beam from the Steel Across America tour, according to CBS News. Allison Crowther accepted the medal on her son's behalf while carrying his red bandana, telling recipients to be courageous, care for others, and recognize that a hero lies within them — a message she has said reflects what the bandana itself means: being courageous and finding, and being, the good.
Three days later, Boston College marked its annual Red Bandana Game on September 11 for the first time in the game's history, with football players wearing “For Welles” nameplates and bandana-patterned uniforms as the Eagles defeated Rutgers 28-21, CBS News reported. In 2006, FDNY Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta had posthumously named Crowther an honorary New York City firefighter, and Crowther's family established the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust in September 2001 to fund scholarships and youth programs, according to Boston College Athletics. Hoodline previously reported that a Lower Manhattan pub, displays a red bandana bearing Crowther's Boston College jersey number among more than 7,000 first-responder patches near Ground Zero.
“The Last 'I Love You'” is now available wherever books are sold, closing the loop on a promise Stapleton made as a boy holding a signed lacrosse ball, and giving new form to a memory of both a hero he never forgot and a sister he continues to honor.
