Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A trumpeter played Taps at the Haines airport on Jan. 5 as the remains of Richard Knapp were transported from town.

Knapp, a retired U.S. Coast Guard commander and rear admiral who also served as commissioner of the Alaska Department of Transportation, died at Haines Assisted Living on Jan. 2. He was 93 and suffered from heart disease.

While serving as commander of the 17th Coast Guard District in Southeast Alaska, Knapp oversaw the successful rescue of 519 passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship Prinsendam, which had caught fire in the Gulf of Alaska on Oct. 4, 1980. A Coast Guard account describes the effort as "one of the nation's largest search and rescue cases."

The dramatic rescue in seas up to 15 feet and winds up to 30 knots included U.S. Air Force, Canadian and civilian rescuers and earned commendations for several involved.

Richard Joseph Knapp was born in Passaic, N.J. on Feb. 4, 1929. He was a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and earned a master's degree in business administration from George Washington University.

He told an interviewer in 1987 that he was attracted to the military for the excitement and the opportunity to receive an education. He said the most difficult year of his life was earning his master's degree, as it imposed an almost limitless amount of work.

"If you were ever not doing your schoolwork but sitting there watching a football game, you felt guilty because something always had to be done," he said.

Knapp served aboard six Coast Guard ships and was commander of four of them – Yeaton, Acushnet, Southwind, and Edisto. He earned three medals, two commendations and the Legion of Merit, and his service included a year aboard Coast Guard vessels patrolling offshore of Vietnam during the U.S. conflict there.

Tom Gemmell, a retired Coast Guard captain from Juneau whose service coincided with Knapp's career, said Knapp was instrumental in establishing fisheries enforcement under the Magnuson Act of 1975 and once commanded an icebreaker in Greenland that rescued and towed another icebreaker hundreds of miles.

"He had a lot of sea time. I considered him a sailor's sailor," Gemmell said.

Knapp was promoted to rear admiral in the Coast Guard in 1978. He lived in Juneau since 1980 and served as DOT commissioner under former Alaska Gov. Bill Sheffield. He also served as the vice-president of the Alaska Railroad Corporation and as senior vice-president of Harbor Enterprises, Inc.

After retiring from the Coast Guard in 1984, Knapp served on the board of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce and on the state's Marine Transportation Advisory Board. He was named Citizen of the Year by the Juneau Chamber of Commerce in 2009. He also chaired a group calling for construction of a road up Lynn Canal.

Knapp moved to Haines to stay in Haines Assisted Living in March 2021.

Knapp's daughter Nancy Peel described her father as a no-nonsense type who avoided wearing his Coast Guard uniform in public and chafed at being assigned a driver. He ordered the flags removed from the government vehicle that drove him around.

"He was a modest guy, really. He didn't like fanfare or attention," Peel said.

Knapp is survived by daughter Nancy Peel of Juneau and by sons Richard Knapp of Avon, Colo., Joseph Pelham of Fredericksbug, Va. and Marc Pelham of Mobile, Ala. He also is survived by 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Knapp's wife Pamela, a native of New London, Conn., died in 2013.

A celebration of life for Richard Knapp will be held at the Juneau Yacht Club on May 5. His ashes will be interred at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. at a later date.