Beloved MS Coast Hall of Fame shrimper remembered as kind, humble and ‘full of grace’

Day after day, Richard Kopszywa shrimped from his old wooden boat named Linda K, and carefully repaired it so the vessel still ran after decades.

“He used to tell me, ‘If I can’t shrimp or if I can’t get out on the water, I think I will probably just die,” his wife, Shelley Kopszywa, said. “It was in his veins.”

Now, his family is grieving after authorities found Kopszywa near Deer Island last week, two days after his wife reported him missing and the Coast Guard found the Linda K empty, five miles from shore.

They do not know what happened. But his family knows that Kopszywa, 75, was working on the boat in the harbor and that he no longer shrimped alone as he aged. They know he left Saturday morning for the Linda K, as he always did, with a flip phone to call his wife. He was a very safe fisherman, she said, and she thought maybe he ran out of minutes or misplaced his phone. She spent a restless night waiting and hoping, and on Sunday she went to the harbor. She did not see the boat.

The Coast Guard scoured more than 1,000 miles of the Mississippi Sound, searching for clues through tide patterns, radar and their own eyes. They stopped looking after 37 hours, and the tragic news came Tuesday: A paddleboarder found Kopszywa between Deer Island and Biloxi.

Kopszywa is in the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum’s Hall of Fame. He owned and was captain of the Linda K, the oldest Biloxi Lugger boat still running. His grandfather came to Biloxi from Poland and started to fish, and family members became fishermen too. Kopszywa’s father bought the Linda K more than seven decades ago, and Kopszywa started fishing at four years old.

What mattered most to him was faith, family and fishing, his loved ones said. He grew up on the Linda-K and learned the trade, attended St. Theresa Catholic School on the north shore of the Biloxi Bay and graduated from D’Iberville High School. He went to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and learned how to be a carpenter. He stopped fishing only briefly, when as a young man, he traveled with an group of evangelicals and met his wife of 46 years, Shelley. They married in 1978 and had three children.

The people who loved him say he was kind and gentle, tender-hearted and teasing. He had a “loving sense of humor,” his daughter, Jennifer, said. Kopszywa would help in a heartbeat and was so handy that his wife never took her car to a mechanic. Their backyard is full of tools and fishing supplies.

He also worked in carpentry and at Chevron. But his family said later in life, he returned to what he loved best. He always wanted to take his grandsons fishing, and was teaching them how to throw a net. He spent every day but Sunday carefully restoring and repairing his boat. They talked about trying to sell it and even put a sign up. He took it down the next day.

“I just can’t do it,” Shelley Kopszywa recalled him saying.

The boat was built in 1928. It survived Hurricanes Camille and Katrina. The family took it out on holidays, and Shelley Kopszywa went out with her husband many times. Once, a few Fourth of Julys ago, a sudden squall struck the boat. Kopszywa, seasoned at sea, threw a life jacket at his wife as water crashed up the back of the boat, she recalled. They made it to shore.

“That was the first time I ever saw him kind of nervous,” Shelley Kopszywa said, “because he was protecting me.”

The boat survived Katrina only because the mast of another sunken vessel kept it afloat, the family said. Now, it is beached on Deer Island.

The family is determined to save it again.

Shelley Kopszywa said she believes her husband died doing what he loved, so she is at peace.

His family has endless good memories: Whenever he got frustrated or aggravated, he always said he was sorry. He kept a list on the refrigerator of people who had done something nice and who he wanted to bring shrimp. His family said always worked in his same boat clothes, no matter that they had holes and paint stains from restorations.

Kopszywa was humble, his wife said, and probably would not have liked all this attention.

But she loves him too much to listen. He was the kind of man who helped her down the steps, she said, and always opened the door for her.

“Full of grace,” she said.

This story was originally published November 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM.