British Visitor With An Eye for Detail helps Tupelo Museum

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI)– A British man who has an eye for detail returned to Tupelo this weekend to make a special contribution to an area museum.

His wife likes to attend the Elvis festival. And while Jim Carpenter joins her for some events, much of the time during his visit to Tupelo is spent here at the Tupelo Veterans Museum putting together very detailed models of scenes from World War Two. When finished, they become of a permanent display of the museum.

“When I first came over here on a visit at the museum and he never had a lot of British stuff, Carpenter explains. “So what I done because he hasn’t got the room to display the vehicles I started making the vehicles and dioramas for him. And each year I come and do a special theme for him,” Carpenter says he has been building these dioramas for years just for the fun of it, and that is why he likes giving them the Veterans Museum. And he believes attention to detail is important.

“I think the detail why I put the detail in is because of what I want to do for those guys,” he explains. “I want to show what they were in true life and give them some respect.”

And Saturday marked the 71st anniversary of the D-Day invasion, which is documented throughout the Veterans Museum. Carpenter says Britain owes a debt of gratitude to its American allies.

“We could never have done it without America because if you look at most of the equipment that the airborne went in with it was mostly American, the Willys Jeep and even in the desert, you look at that desert scenes, Willys Jeeps,” Carpenter points out.

Carpenter’s current project may be his last contribution to the Veterans Museum. He is not certain that he will be coming back to Tupelo.