About 100 mourners gathered Saturday during a memorial service to remember the two Hungarian students who died after the tourist boat they were on was struck by a barge Wednesday.
The service was held at the Seaport Museum near the site of the accident. City officials and religious leaders joined other exchange students, host families and the Hungarian ambassador to the United States to remember 20-year-old Szabolcs Prem and 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner.
A Hungarian minister quoted scriptures from the Bible in the victims native language. Students who attended embraced and consoled each other. At the end of the ceremony, wreaths and flowers were dropped into the river and a pair of doves were released.
Rachel Keller, who was on the duck boat and is a youth member of the West Chester Church that host the Hungarians, said she is still coping.
“I am taking it pretty well, actually, I think.”
Shawn Vartan, a snack vendor along the Delaware who rescued some of the survivors, said the incident is still fresh in his memory.
“I just ran over, dropped everything I was doing, ran over, ran down to the dock told everybody to swim over and as they swam over to me whoever made it over I just pulled them out of the water. I picked up about 6 to 7 people.”
Crews recovered the two bodies in the Delaware River on Friday. Thirty-three other passengers and the two crew members of the duck boat that sank Wednesday were all rescued.
The National Transportation Safety Board is now interviewing the crew of the tugboat to determine whether they heard a distress call from the Ducks Boat before the crash on Wednesday.
Bela Szombati, the Ambassador of Hungary, insists these youth exchange programs will continue in the future, but admits this tragedy will be difficult to overcome.
“When it's a young person- and two young people in this case- it's almost unbearable- almost impossible to comprehend.”
Officials say the 11 other visiting Hungarian students are likely to cut short their planned three-week stay. Szombati says his office is working to reunite the students with their parents in Hungary as soon as possible.
