Eugene F. "Gene" Boutilier was born on October 17, 1926 in Houlton, Maine. He was the sixth and youngest child of Peter "Oscar" Boutilier and Jesse Olive Springer. Oscar was the first child born in the United States after grandfather James Boutilier came to Oakfield, Maine in 1881 from Nova Scotia. Oscar did summer farm work and winter lumber cutting, worked for the railroad, and established a repair shop for cars and farm machinery around 1925 in Smyrna Mills, Maine. Jessie was born and attended school in Glenwood, Maine until she had finished all the books available to her country school. Jessie instilled her love of reading and the support of education in all her children.

When Gene was eight years old he contracted polio. Three years later, he spent nearly six months at a hospital in Portland, Maine, for treatment of possible complications from polio. During Gene's hospital stay, about 250 miles from the family home, only his sister Aileen visited. He completed the required schoolwork while in the hospital and advanced to the next grade with his class.

In 1942 Oscar sold the repair shop to his partner and moved his family to Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Oscar worked full time and Gene worked summers in the South Portland Shipyard during World War II. Gene worked the night shift as a welder.

Gene graduated from Old Orchard Beach High School in June 1944. He tried to enlist in the Army Air Force, but the armed services would not accept recruits who had contracted polio. Gene enrolled at the University of Maine and graduated with a B. S. in Electrical Engineering in 1948. He accepted a job with the Connecticut Light and Power Company and moved to Waterbury, Connecticut. He married Joyce Anna Kemp on July 7, 1951 in Auburn, Maine.

In 1955 Gene moved to Westbrook, Maine to work as a plant electrical engineer for the S. D. Warren Paper Company. In 1959 he took a job with the Jack & Heinz Company in Cleveland, Ohio where he worked on circuit breakers for the Boeing 727. In 1961 Gene relocated to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts for employment with IBM as a systems engineer. He started working on use of computer systems for process control applications at electric generating plants and paper mills. In 1976 Gene accepted an assignment in the IBM Regional Office in Minnesota and moved to Edina, Minnesota.

He was an enthusiastic supporter of aviation and the manned space program. He was proud of the United States accomplishment of lunar landings and development of the Space Shuttle. He enjoyed seeing airplanes of the Commemorative Air Force at air shows. He especially enjoyed visiting the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Gene and Joyce Boutilier raised four children: Glenn (Donna) Boutilier of Cincinnati, Ohio, Susan Boutilier (deceased 1998), Scott (Marcia) Boutilier of Trout Valley, Illinois, and Kathy (Steve) Hatch of New Berlin, Wisconsin. Gene and Joyce also have six grandchildren: Emily and Joanna Boutilier, Rachelle, Christopher, and Alex Yecke, and Danielle Hatch.

Eugene Boutilier died on December 17, 1984 in Edina, Minnesota; exactly eighty-one years after Wilbur and Orville Wright engineered the first powered heavier-than-air flight. His ashes were returned to his home state of Maine