4 Live in San Diego : Hostage’s Release Is Toasted by Children

The children of Jerome Barczak finally had a chance Sunday to crack open the champagne that had been on ice since their father was taken hostage June 14 aboard a TWA 727 as he traveled from Cairo to San Diego for a long-awaited family reunion and his daughter’s graduation from Mission Bay High School.

Barczak, 52, a former San Diego resident working in Cairo as a civil engineer for General Dynamics, was among the 39 hostages released Sunday. The hijacked Flight 847, after a change of planes, was bound for San Diego on that fateful Friday night.

The Barczak children, four of whom live in San Diego, did not find out about the hijacking until they went to Lindbergh Field to meet the plane that never arrived. Throughout the ordeal, however, they remained staunchly optimistic that their father would return unharmed, and soon.

Father’s Day, they said, was put on hold until Barczak could be there to celebrate it. Sunday, with Barczak’s homecoming in sight, the festivities began in Memphis, where the four San Diego Barczak children had driven to be with their oldest brother after hearing Wednesday night that their father’s release was imminent.

“We just got finished drinking a toast,” said Michael Barczak, 21, when contacted by a reporter minutes after watching his father and the other hostages appear on television at a press conference from the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus. The hostages stopped over in Syria on Sunday after their release from Beirut en route to Frankfurt, West Germany, where they were expected to spend the night before returning to New York today or Tuesday.

Michael Barczak said he was not certain if any of the children will fly to Frankfurt, or just meet their father in New York when he arrives back on American soil. “We’ll do whatever he wants, but we wanted to come this far east so we’d be close and all the kids would be together when he was let free,” he said.

“He’s not the kind of guy who likes a lot of attention or fuss about him, so he might just want to wait to see us when he gets back home,” Michael Barczak said.

Mary Ann Foglio, Barczak’s ex-wife and a San Diego resident, agreed Sunday that Jerome was “a quiet man who probably would be uncomfortable with all of the attention the hostages will get when they get to Frankfurt.”

During the Damascus press conference, Barczak was one of the few hostages not to take a front-row chair at the tables where the 39 American set free were seated. He did not speak and showed little emotion, unlike many of the hostages.

“We could see him, there in the back, kind of hunched down,” Michael Barczak said. “It was great just to see him. He’s lost weight, and we thought he looked very tired. I think he just wants to avoid all of the hoopla, get home, and spend some quiet time with his family.”

Michael Barczak said he and his brothers and sister were not too discouraged Saturday, when there was a delay in the planned release of the hostages. “The State Department gave some very strong signals that we should not worry, that the wait would only be a little longer. Still, we couldn’t help but be nervous until we knew for sure he was safe.”

The snag in the negotiations for the hostages’ freedom came after Shia Moslem leader Nabih Berri demanded a promise from President Reagan that there would be no military retribution for the hijacking of the plane or the taking of the hostages.

Berri’s demand seemed to have the wholehearted support of the hostages speaking at the Damascus press conference, and that of the Barczak family as well.

“We’ve been very mixed on the idea of any kind of retaliation,” Michael Barczak said. “But we don’t think any human lives should be taken. If anything, we should try to learn from this whole experience--that’s something that would help out everybody in the world.”