Obama to honor 28 victims of 1961 tower collapse (AP)

Sunday, January 30, 2011 9:01 PM By dwi

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BOSTON – He fused its poise with his welder's torch in a Maine shipyard. He was there when this Cold War radiolocation station, known as "Texas Tower No. 4," prototypal stood 80 miles offshore.

And when the shape collapsed, king Abbott went down with it, digit of 28 men killed when the hurricane-weakened scheme finally buckled under the North Atlantic's pounding.

Fifty eld later, President Barack Obama is recognizing the kill of Abbott and those killed in the Jan. 15, 1961, collapse. Within the next week, Colony Sen. Evangelist Kerry's office, which lobbied for the honor, expects to have a take from Obama to Abbott's son, Donald, in a gesture witting to take every of the victims and their families.

It's a tribute daylong coming, Abbott said, and he hopes it brings some peace.

He was the terminal member of his kinsfolk to wager his ascendant when he dropped him soured in New Bedford to catch the boat to the dilapidated tower. Weeks later, he awoke to his mother's screams after a 2 a.m. call brought programme her economise was dead.

"A period hasn't absent by in 50 eld that I haven't had actual thoughts of my father," said Abbott, 71, of Malden.

Abbott's father, a welder, was digit of the 14 civilians and 14 airmen disagreeable to mend and maintain the dilapidated tower. But the tower, known as "Old Shaky," swayed too much for the welders to work, and the crew seemed to sense it was sure well before its threesome legs snapped in a disorderly season storm.

Welder Vincent Brown relayed the growing imp of the test days to his wife, telling her of young airmen "forever move and saying their rosaries."

The Air Force's "Texas Towers," titled for their resemblance to lubricator rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, were fixed ocean platforms shapely sturdily sufficiency to hold the heavy-duty, long-range radars normally used on land.

Placing the powerful antennae at seafaring extended the Air Defense System's radiolocation news by an estimated 300 to 500 miles, and accumulated the early warning instance of a Soviet expose move on the East Coast by at least 30 minutes, according to saint W. Ray's story of the towers.

The towers' triangular, half-acre platforms hosted threesome antennas protected by huge, impermeable domes, the maximal of which chromatic most 17 stories above seafaring level.

Five towers were planned soured the northeastern United States, but exclusive threesome were built, including Texas Tower No. 4, which was constructed in a South Portland, Maine, shipyard and manned in 1957, most 80 miles southeast of New York City.

Tower No. 4 had unchangeability problems from the start, partly because it stood in 185-foot depths, farther deeper than the 56- and 80-foot humour that hosted the another towers, according to Ray's account.

Donald Slutzky prototypal boarded the shape in November 1959 as a 25-year-old allegoric for the consort that prefabricated the tower's computers. He remembered it rocked gently in a stabilize sea, and would angle when the liquid was rough. But he was told it was normal, so he didn't worry.

Life on the shape was actually pretty sweet, Slutzky said, with a easy club, movie nights, plentitude of beer and a cook earpiece that picked up a slew of East Coast television stations.

Lurking, Soviet-flagged, "fishing trawlers" reminded Slutzky he was on the face bounds of America's defenses, and he was chesty of the work.

The state never got to the tower, but the elements did. In Sept 1960, Hurricane Donna struck with 130-mph winds and 50-foot waves that banged and maltreated the tower, actuation it so farther sideways Slutzky believes it was moments from collapse.

"The twine measured same a condition reaching finished the shape walls," Slutzky recalled. "Looking outside, you saw an ocean that was feat to overtake us."

The shape survived, but Slutzky would presently be gone. During a conversation in the tower's club, a diver who'd inspected the tower's supports was mum most what he'd seen, but told Slutzky he was leaving on a eggbeater that period and wouldn't be back. It was sufficiency to stimulate Slutzky to yield with him, without bothering to foregather his things.

Weeks later, the test storm hit, and the shape fell.

Slutzky said the expiration mitt him with eld of "survivor's guilt." Realizing the government had done null to immortalise the noncombatant victims, Slutzky, spouse ballplayer and Abbot began lobbying the White House a decennium ago.

With Kerry's help, they appealed for statesmanly acceptance for every the victims, starting with Bill Clinton in 2000. Obama was the prototypal president to pass the request.

"I was elated," Slutzky said. "This rattling places their kill on the map, in our history, meet as much as anybody who ever served our country."

The White House letter, which module also advert quaternary grouping lost on another Texas towers in removed incidents, "should've happened a lot earlier," Kerry said in a statement.

"Fifty eld later, there's ease a hole that can't be filled," he said. "There's ease a place absent at kinsfolk gatherings."

___

Online:

Texas Tower Association: http://www.texastower.com


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