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WELLES REMY CROWTHER: Kindness Remembered

 

It is a quirk of human nature that the person who does an act of kindness may forget it, but the recipient does not. And so it was, that upon the loss of their 24-year- old son, Welles Remy Crowther, his parents, Alison and Jefferson Crowther of Upper Nyack, received a note. It referred to only a few moments in their son's life, high school moments at that, but it had stayed with another young man for years.

"Welles was a big player in ice hockey," Ms. Crowther said, "and he was skating with a younger kid and nobody was passing him the puck. Welles comes up to him and says, `Are you ready to score your first varsity goal?' He gets the puck, and passes it right to this kid and he scores his first goal."

Mr. Crowther was an equities trader with Sandler O'Neill & Partners, on the 104th floor of the south tower. He shared an apartment in Greenwich Village with his friend Chuck Platz, favored Hawaiian shirts for his evenings out. Mr. Crowther's mother speaks of her son's gallantry in escorting her to the opera. Mr. Platz cites a very different example: the night that Mr. Crowther, when a female friend had had too much to drink, put her over his shoulder and carried her up five flights.

A memorial service was held for Mr. Crowther on Saturday, but neither his parents nor his roommate have been able to clean out his room. "The bed is still unmade, the dent from his head is still there on the pillow, his clothes are still on the floor," Mr. Platz says. "Sometimes I hear somebody's key turn and I think, `Oh, Welles is home.'"

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times