Mitt Romney's Dad

We all have noticed how much Mitt Romney loves to talk about his dad emphasizing on how he "grew up poor." But that's not genuinely the whole truth...  






Mitt Romney's dad, George Romney, grew up in a family that suffered financial troubles and enjoyed luxury. The elder Romney pursued an upwardly mobile path to become chairman of American Motors Corp. before being elected governor of Michigan.

Mitt regularly recalls the hardships his dad suffered growing up.

"I'll tell you about how much I love this country, this extraordinary land, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company," Romney told the crowd. "Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car."

In detail, George Romney was born July 8, 1907, in Chihuahua, Mexico, where his grandfather, Miles Park Romney, and other Mormons had moved to avoid mistreatment and U.S. laws against polygamy.

It has to be noted that Miles Park Romney had five wives and 30 children, and fled to Mexico after passage of the 1882 Edmunson Act that barred polygamy. George Romney's father, Gaskell Romney, did not have multiple wives.


According to Mitt Romney's book "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness": "At 5 years old, Dad and his family were finally living pretty well. They had a nice home and a small farm, and Dad even had his own pony, called Monty."

According to the "The Real Romney," a book written by two Boston Globe reporters, George Romney's dad, Gaskell Romney, was a carpenter who led a wealthy life in a Mormon colony in Mexico. But turmoil from the Mexican revolution later forced the Romneys and other Mormon families to return to the United States.

The family suddenly went from owning a large Mexican ranch to being nearly penniless and the family moved from house to house in California, Idaho and Utah as they struggled to build a new life from scratch.

"Dad used to regale us kids with claims that one year in Idaho his family lived on nothing but potatoes - for breakfast, lunch and dinner," Mitt Romney wrote in his book.

According to the Globe book, as time went by Mitt's grandfather, Gaskell Romney, became rich, building some of the finest homes in Salt Lake City, but along with many other Americans suffered financial losses during the Great Depression.

According to the Globe book,  George Romney wrote of his dad: "He never took out bankruptcy, which he could have done several times."

George Romney worked as a plasterer during high school and later attended four colleges, but never graduated. He spent two years as a Mormon missionary in England and Scotland. His first exposure to politics was in 1929, as an aide in Washington, D.C., to Democratic Sen. David I. Walsh of Massachusetts.



He went on to work at ALCOA and the Aluminum Wares Association. His first job in Detroit came in 1939 when he was local manager of the Automobile Manufacturers Association.

He later became head of American Motors and Michigan's governor. Romney gave up the governor's office in 1969 to become secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Nixon administration.

George Romney's success ensured a more privileged path for his son, Mitt Romney, who was raised in the high-class Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills and attended an elite prep school before receiving degrees from the business and law schools of Harvard University.

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