James Richard "Jim" Krut, of Gettysburg, died on Sunday, August 2, 2026, at the age of 80. Journalist and editor, decorated combat medic, actor and director, community builder, gardener, and devoted husband, father, and grandfather — Jim did not live one life so much as several, and he gave himself fully to each.

He was born April 3, 1946, at J.C. Blair Memorial Hospital in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and grew up on the north side of Mount Union, the youngest of four children in a close, hardworking Ukrainian American family. His father, John, worked in the brickyard and spoke Ukrainian with the neighbors; his mother, Sophia, ran a beauty shop and anchored the family with a fierce patience Jim never forgot. From that small river town — with its ball fields, cherry trees, and dusty back roads — he carried a lifelong faith in people and an irrepressible curiosity about the wider world.

That curiosity took him far. At Captain Jack Area High School (class of 1964), he edited the school paper, the Trojan, was named the Huntingdon Daily News "Reporter of the Year," starred in the senior play, and was elected president of his junior class. He won the first-ever scholarship from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association to Point Park College in Pittsburgh, where he helped lead a student effort that transformed the two-year school into a four-year university, and earned his B.S. in journalism and communications in 1968.

Soon after graduation, Jim answered his country's call. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a combat medic and served from 1968 to 1971, including a twelve-month tour in Vietnam with an artillery battery that was almost always in the field. For his courage under fire, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with "V" device for valor and the Purple Heart. He carried the memories of that year for the rest of his life, and he turned them toward service — writing about the struggles of returning veterans, advocating for their jobs and their care, and later serving as chaplain of the Carlisle Vietnam Veterans. He believed, always, that the names and sacrifices of those who served should never be forgotten.

Journalism was Jim's first craft and a lifelong love. He reported for the Huntingdon Daily News, edited the Valley Log in Orbisonia, and in 1983 became editor of Penn Lines, the magazine of Pennsylvania's rural electric cooperatives, which reached hundreds of thousands of homes. He had a gift for telling rural Pennsylvania's story — writing some of the state's earliest reporting on Lyme disease and radon — and a conviction that a good publication had to be "about them," the readers. He went on to build and lead the communications program at Adams Electric Cooperative until his retirement in 2009, earning numerous state and national awards for his writing and photography along the way. In 2014, he capped his career by co-authoring The Fight for Power, an award-winning 75-year history of the cooperative.

But it was the stage — and the screen — that carried Jim's name around the world. From his very first role, as Abraham Lincoln in an elementary-school play (long before he would make his home in Gettysburg), acting was his great passion. He performed with the Pittsburgh Laboratory Theatre and helped found the Ironclad Agreement, a traveling troupe that brought original plays about America's age of invention to stages from Chicago to Charleston to MIT, and even appeared on Bill Moyers' public television series. He was a founding member and board president of Gettysburg Stage, and over his career he appeared in more than twenty films.

And in 1978, in George A. Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, Jim created the role that would make him a legend: the "Helicopter Zombie," whose unforgettable demise has been ranked among the top zombie deaths in cinema history. Decades later, fans from Japan to the UK to across the United States still wrote to him, and he delighted in meeting them as a guest at film conventions in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany. He wore his cult fame with humor and grace — a small-town boy from Mount Union who never stopped being amazed by where life had taken him.

Jim gave generously to his community, too, with leadership roles at the Gettysburg-Adams Chamber of Commerce, which named him Volunteer of the Year in 1998, and Community Media of South-Central Pennsylvania, among others. He loved music — as a young soldier, he once hitchhiked hundreds of miles across Texas just to see Janis Joplin in concert — and he loved his garden, trading growing tips with online fans as happily as he traded film stories. Proud of his Ukrainian heritage, he visited Ukraine three times and, in his final years, spoke out in support of its people.

Above all, Jim loved his family. He and Linda married on April 7, 1979, and shared 47 years together — a life that carried them from Pittsburgh to Huntingdon County to the Harrisburg area and eventually to Gettysburg, which became home for the rest of his life.

Jim is survived by his wife, Linda (Muntz) Krut; his daughters, Melissa Marie Krut Dheru and her husband, Dhananjay Dheru, and Angelica Anne Halter and her husband, Braden Halter; his four grandchildren, Arjun Jay, Charlotte, Virginia, and Joanna; and his brothers, John Joseph Krut Jr. and Stephen Frank Krut. He was preceded in death by his parents, John Joseph and Sophia (George) Krut, and his sister, Rose Anne Krut Puchalla.

A public visitation and celebration of Jim's life will be held at Buhrig's Funeral Home and Gathering Place in Mechanicsburg on Monday, August 10, 2026, between 4 and 7 p.m. A funeral service will be held at the same location on Tuesday, August 11, at 10 a.m. Jim will be interred at Fort Indiantown Gap National Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, the family invites those who wish to honor Jim to make a gift to Operation White Stork, a U.S. veteran-led nonprofit that delivers first aid kits and other lifesaving, non-lethal aid directly to the front lines in Ukraine, or to World Central Kitchen, which is among the first to reach communities with fresh meals in the wake of disaster, conflict, and other crises.

"Never take freedom, or our veterans, or life for granted," Jim told a reunion of his high school classmates a few years ago. He never did — and all who knew him are the richer for it.