World War II Veteran
Omer Chartrand
1928 - 2013

Interviewed by:
Charlotte Miller

"You do the best job you can at whatever you do, and be proud of the job you did, so that
when you look back on it, you can say 'I'm glad I did that because it worked out fine.'"

~ Omer Chartrand, 10:05

Omer Chartrand's Story:

Omer Chartrand, retired pharmacist and clerk magistrate, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on December 3rd, 1928. He attended public schools in Lowell until he graduated in 1946. After high school, Chartrand entered the army as a regular enlistee in the US Army Medical Corps. He served as a scrub technician at Fort Clayton General Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. At the young age of 18, Chartrand performed numerous surgeries to help save the lives of soldiers. When not fixing broken bones or assisting to wounded soldiers, Chartrand specialized in urology at Fort Clayton General Hospital. He was stationed in Panama until 1949, then returned home to study pharmacy and pharmacy law at the New England College of Pharmacy, which later became part of Northeastern University. He then opened his own pharmacy in Barnstable. After spending several years in this field, he was appointed by a governor as Clerk Magistrate of the Barnstable district court. The greatest things Chartrand learned in the military were ethics and discipline, which "are in your entire life" (10:01).