Philippe Jutras, 87; WWII Soldier Served as Curator of Airborne Museum in France

Philippe Jutras, a World War II veteran who devoted three decades to keeping alive the memory of the Normandy invasion as curator of the Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France, has died. He was 87.

Jutras died April 4 of injuries sustained in a fall at his home in Sainte-Mere-Eglise.

More than 10,000 troops of the U.S. Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions parachuted into Sainte-Mere-Eglise around midnight June 5, 1944, in the first operation of D-day. It was the first French town liberated by American forces.

A native of Wells, Maine, Jutras was the son of French-speakers from Quebec.

A quartermaster, he landed on Utah Beach weeks after D-day. His supply unit moved on to Sainte-Mere-Eglise.

He returned to the United States immediately after the war, eventually becoming a legislator in Maine.

He served in the state Senate in the 1965 session and in the House in the 1969 and 1971 sessions.

In 1974, Jutras returned to France to marry a local woman, Antoinette Castel, whom he had met while staying with her family in the war years.

Jutras volunteered to run the Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, which was built in the 1960s, and amassed one of the region’s best collections, which included a C-47 transport, a Waco glider, a halftrack, a tank, uniforms from privates and generals, and letters home.

“To me, this isn’t a museum,” Jutras said years ago. “It’s a shrine to those who liberated Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France and Europe.”

For his dedicated work in maintaining and expanding the museum, Jutras was made a member of the Legion of Honor by the French government on the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.

Survivors include his wife, and two daughters from a previous marriage.