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 Barack Obama is recognizing the sacrifice of Abbott and those killed in the Jan. 15, 1961, collapse. Within the next week, Massachusetts 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 all of 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.

“A day hasn’t gone by in 50 years that I haven’t had real thoughts of my father,” said Abbott, 71.

Abbott’s father, a welder, was one of 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.”

With Kerry’s help, a group has appealed for presidential recognition for all the victims, starting with Bill Clinton in 2000. Obama was the first president to acknowledge the request.

“I was elated,” Slutzky said. “This really places their sacrifice on the map, in our history, just as much as anybody who ever served our country.”

The White House letter, which will also remember four people lost on other Texas towers in separate incidents, “should’ve happened a lot earlier,” Kerry said.