BOSTON - He fused its steel with his welder's torch in a Maine shipyard. He was there when this Cold War radar station, known as "Texas Tower No. 4," first stood 80 miles offshore.
And when the tower collapsed, David Abbott went down with it, one of 28 men killed when the hurricane-weakened structure finally buckled under the North Atlantic's pounding.
Fifty years later, President Obama is recognizing the sacrifice of Abbott and those killed in the Jan. 15, 1961, collapse. Within the next week, Mass. Sen. John Kerry's office, which lobbied for the honor, expects to deliver a letter from Obama to Abbott's son, Donald, in a gesture intended to honor the victims and their families.
It's a tribute long coming, Abbott said, and he hopes it brings some peace. He was the last member of his family to see his father when he dropped him off in New Bedford to catch the boat to the damaged tower. Weeks later, he awoke to his mother's screams after a 2 a.m. call brought news her husband was dead.
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"A day hasn't gone by in 50 years that I haven't had real thoughts of my father," said Abbott, 71, of Malden.
Abbott's father, a welder, was one the 14 civilians and 14 airmen trying to fix and maintain the damaged tower. But the tower, known as "Old Shaky," swayed too much for the welders to work, and the crew seemed to sense it was doomed well before its three legs snapped in a wild winter storm.
Welder Vincent Brown relayed the growing terror of the final days to his wife, telling her of young airmen "forever kneeling and saying their rosaries."
The Air Force's "Texas Towers," named for their resemblance to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, were fixed ocean platforms built to hold the heavy-duty, long-range radars normally used on land.
Placing the powerful antennae at sea extended the Air Defense System's radar coverage by an estimated 300 to 500 miles, and increased the early warning time of a Soviet air attack on the East Coast by at least 30 minutes, according to Thomas W. Ray's history of the towers.
Five towers were planned off the northeastern United States, but only three were built, including Texas Tower No. 4, which had stability problems from the start, partly because it stood in 185-foot depths, far deeper than the 56- and 80-foot waters that hosted the other towers.
Donald Slutzky first boarded the tower in November 1959 as a 25-year-old representative for the company that made the tower's computers. Lurking, Soviet-flagged, "fishing trawlers" reminded Slutzky he was on the front edge of America's defenses, and he was proud of the work.
The Soviets never got to the tower, but the elements did. In September 1960, Hurricane Donna struck with 130-mph winds and 50-foot waves that banged and battered the tower, pushing it so far sideways Slutzky believes it was moments from collapse.
The tower survived, but Slutzky would soon be gone. During a conversation in the tower's club, a diver who'd inspected the tower's supports was mum about what he'd seen, but told Slutzky he was leaving on a helicopter that day and wouldn't be back. It was enough to prompt Slutzky to leave with him, without bothering to gather his things.
Weeks later, the final storm hit, and the tower fell.
