For 71 years, Roy Knight never stopped

In an interview Roy Knight gave for the book “Salt in Their Veins: Conversations With Coastal Mainers,” he described briefly taking a job at Bath Iron Works after the lobster season ended. The interviewer asked if he needed the money. It wasn’t about money, Roy told him: “The way I grew up, you worked.”

That value is apparent from the long list of things Roy did in his life. He fished. He traveled. He raised three kids. He ran the Interstate Lobster Co-op. He and his wife, Debbie, started the Harpswell Santa Fund. They ran a catering business. He was a volunteer with Harpswell Neck Fire and Rescue.

“He always told me you got to keep doing something or else you’re going to stop,” said his oldest son, Ryan.

Knight, who died Aug. 10 while out hauling lobster traps, grew up on Harpswell Neck, near what is now Mitchell Field. Fishing and travel would take him up and down the Eastern Seaboard and across North America, but his home was always in Harpswell.

Roy wasn’t born into a commercial fishing family, although there were ship captains in his mother’s family. His father, Bill, worked at Bath Iron Works and lobstered from a skiff. He built Roy his first skiff and taught him how to build lobster traps. In high school, Roy started helping on lobster boats. 

But Roy’s parents didn’t want him to be a fisherman. They insisted that he finish high school. In “Salt in Their Veins,” Roy said he was the only boy from Harpswell in his class to graduate from Brunswick High School. Afterward, he went to what is now Southern Maine Community College, with its campus looking out on Casco Bay, to learn how to build and repair refrigeration systems.

From the classroom one morning, he saw Harpswell’s Charlie Johnson, whom Roy had fished with, coming in from a swordfishing trip. Roy drove over to the wharf at lunchtime, and a few days later he was headed out to the Grand Banks with Johnson.

The first trip was a bust — a storm washed away gear and broke equipment, and Roy came home with nothing to show for it. But his second trip was a slammer. Roy bought himself a Pontiac GTO, with cash, to celebrate. He never went back to school.

Roy was around for three of Maine’s commercial fishing booms. He got in on the tail end of swordfishing, then he switched to groundfishing. When those stocks dropped too low, and he was needed more at home, he bought out a lobsterman and fished through the recent heyday of lobstering. At one point — before the state imposed limits — Debbie said he was fishing 2,000 traps.

He joined the Interstate Lobster Co-op on Ash Point in 1980. For many years, he was its president. Roy would be the first person to the wharf in the morning and the last one to leave at night. Coming in from hauling, he would be on the phone, haggling with a bait dealer or lobster buyer.

Fellow co-op member Andy Johnson, with whom Roy started the Harpswell Lobster Boat Races, said Roy was tough with the dealers. 

Another member, Dana McIntire, said, “He understood that you couldn’t necessarily be everyone’s friend. He wasn’t always. But it was always in the interest of the co-op.”

Co-op members get a share of the wharf’s profits, but the margins in lobstering are thin. Some years, Roy only managed to get members a 50-cent bonus per pound, Andy said, but he was always proud that he got them something.

He was devoted to his family. When Ryan was still a toddler, Roy would call home by radio from fishing boats way offshore to talk to him.

Ryan was Roy’s son from his first marriage. Debbie said that when she and Roy were dating, for many years his weekends with Ryan were just for the two of them.

He taught his kids to mend traps and grow vegetables. He took them to games at Fenway and the Garden. Ryan remembers going to see the Celtics playing Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

Roy would come home from hauling all day and push his daughter, Rachael, on a tire swing in the barn. He was there for sports games and dance recitals and graduations.

When his youngest son, William, was working on oil field supply boats in the Gulf of Mexico, Roy would keep track of weather and his ship’s position. All three kids still live within sight of the houses he lived in.

Roy’s devotion continued with his grandchildren. As he got older, he would skip days of hauling to attend their games. When he would pick up his granddaughter from the bus, he’d hide candy around the cab of his truck for her to find.

He let his grandkids come down to his den or his workshop to study his maps or work on little projects. “They thought he was this magical person,” said his daughter, Rachael.

On his boat, Roy could be a demanding captain. “It was his way or you could swim home,” said his helper, Dustin Owens, who fished with him on and off for 20 years. Owens said those lessons could be hard sometimes, but as he grew older, he appreciated the value of both Roy’s lessons and his example. “I wouldn’t be where I was if it hadn’t been for Roy Knight,” he said.

Owens and Roy’s grandson Dillon were lobstering with him the day he collapsed at the helm after an apparent heart attack.

He was known for his cooking, another way he provided for others. For several years he hosted a pig roast at his house. On long fishing trips, he would cook for the whole crew. Ryan remembers helping his dad fill half a dozen or more shopping carts and pushing them down to the wharf in Portland Harbor. Roy took two cookbooks with him: a red-checked Better Homes and Gardens volume and Marjorie Standish’s “Cooking Down East.”

One of Roy’s visible contributions to Harpswell is the Santa Fund, even though he kept his red-suited alter ego a secret for many years. The idea of providing gifts to kids who needed them sprung from a tragedy.

In September 1991, 29-year-old Lewis Ward was out lobstering when his foot got caught in a string of traps as they went over the stern. He was dragged overboard and died. Roy helped to bring his body to shore.

Debbie remembers the two of them talking that winter about Lewy’s wife and three kids. They went out and bought them some presents, then bought a Santa Claus suit and delivered them.

Then they started talking about other kids in Harpswell who might need presents. Soon, their kitchen and basement transformed into a toy store each December. They started offering heating oil and firewood too. The Harpswell Santa Fund continues as a nonprofit organization, its mission taken up by neighbors. The group has helped hundreds of people.

Roy once told his friend Andy Johnson that the two of them would live forever, since only the good die young. Roy died sooner than the people who loved him would have wanted, whether or not 71 years old is still young. What is for sure, however, is that he did good in Harpswell.