Visiting Hungarian group home after Duck-boat tragedy

The surviving Hungarian victims of last week's Ride the Ducks accident arrived home yesterday after what the youth-group leader who hosted them here said was a quiet ride to JFK Airport in New York City on Monday.

Jackie Kennedy, youth director of Marshallton United Methodist Church in West Chester, who traveled with the 11 surviving Hungarian students and their two teachers to the airport, said the departure was bittersweet.

"We've created a family here, under very sad circumstances," she said. "Everybody was pretty emotional, but as we stood there and waved, everybody was smiling and waving back."

Kennedy, 54, who was also on the Ride the Ducks tour with her 17-year-old daughter when it was run down by a barge in the Delaware River last Wednesday, said the Hungarians were not scared to travel but were scared to face the media at home.

"Here, we were able to protect them and escort them," she said. "They had requested to not have to deal with the press at all in their grief, but when they get back to their own country, it's a different story."

Anna Gyulai Gaal, a reporter with the Hungarian newspaper Bors, said the media was not allowed to talk with the students or their teachers when they arrived at the airport in Vienna. The Austrian capital is about a 45-minute drive from the students' hometown, Mosonmagyarovar.

"The parents, the principal of the school and the mayor of the city were also there, but they were very upset when we tried to get in contact with the families or the kids," she wrote in an e-mail to the Daily News.

Kennedy said that the night before the Hungarians left West Chester, the entire group had dinner together. She said many of the Hungarian students asked if their new friends would visit them soon.

Having already been to Hungary five times, Kennedy said she plans on going back, though she doesn't know when. She said that before she does, she and her daughter would have to deal with their own emotions and trauma from the Duck-boat accident.

"First, I'll try to get my own sea legs back here," she said.

Citing the ongoing investigation, Kennedy didn't say much about being involved in the crash, which killed two Hungarian students. But she did stress that many of the students on board that day were "heroes," giving over their life jackets to those who couldn't swim as well.

"What I can tell you is that it all happened really fast," she said. "And that the barge was really big."

The National Transportation Safety Board didn't release any updates in the ongoing investigation yesterday, following Monday's announcement that the first mate of the tug boat that was pushing the barge invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to meet with investigators.

Kennedy said she didn't have much reaction to the announcement when she heard it Monday.

"I'm just not going to jump to conclusions. I'm just going to wait," she said. "I'm going to take it as it comes and let it unfold because, clearly, they don't know what happened yet."