George W. Romney

At 88 years old, George W. Romney physical status not available right now. We will update George W. Romney's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and Republican Party politician.

He served as chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973.

He was the father of former Governor of Massachusetts, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and incoming Utah Senator Lenore Romney, father of former Republican presidential nominee Lenore Romney, and former Massachusetts Senator Ronna McDaniel, and the uncle of former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. Romney was born in Mexico to American parents living in the Mormon colonies; during the Mexican Revolution, his family had to leave the country as a child.

The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they suffered during the Great Depression.

Romney served in various positions, served as a Mormon missionary in the United Kingdom, and attended several colleges in the United States but did not graduate from any of them.

He moved to Detroit and joined the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, where he served as the chief spokesman for the automobile industry during World War II and negotiated a joint deal in which companies could share production improvements.

Early life and background

Both Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who left the country with their children as a result of the federal government's investigation of polygamy. Helaman Pratt (1846-1909), a Mexican immigrant who presided over the Mormon mission in Mexico City before heading to Chihua, Mexico, and the son of original Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt (1807-1877), was his maternal grandfather. Rey L. Pratt (1878-1931), Rey L. Pratt (1878-1931), a Mormon immigrant, played a key role in the preservation and expansion of the Mormon presence in Mexico and South America. George Romney (1734–1802), a well-known portrait painter in Britain during the 18th century's last quarter, was a more distant kinsman.

Gaskell Romney (1871–1955) and Anna Amelia Pratt (1876–1926) were both citizens and natives of Utah's Territory. They married in 1895 in Mexico and lived in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Mexico's state of Chihua (one of the Mormon colonies), where George was born on July 8, 1907. They followed monogamy (polygamy having been outlawed by the 1890s manifesto, but they did persist in some regions, including Mexico). George had three older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister. Gaskell Romney, a successful carpenter, house builder, and farmer who lived in the colony's most wealthy family, which was located in an agricultural valley below the Sierra Madre Occidental. George, the family's uncle, chose U.S. citizenship for their children.

The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, and the Mormon colonies were threatened in 1911-1912 by marauder raids, including "Red Flaggers" Pascual Orozco and José Inés Salazar. The son of a distant gunshot heard the sounds of gunshots and saw protesters marching through the village streets. In July 1912, the Romney family returned to the United States, leaving their house and almost all of their property behind. "We were the first refugees of the twentieth century," Romney later said.

Romney grew up in humble circumstances in the United States. In El Paso, Texas, the family and other Mormon refugees were convicted of receiving a $100,000 fund for refugees set up by the US Congress. After a few months, they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter. Other children in kindergarten mocked Romney's national origins by calling him "Mex."

The family moved to Oakley, Idaho, in 1913, where they grew and subsisted largely on Idaho potatoes. As potato prices dropped, the farm was not on good land and lost. The family migrated to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1916, where Gaskell Romney revived building work, but the family remained poor. Due to higher World War I commodities prices, they moved to Rexburg, Idaho, where Gaskell became a thriving home and commercial builder in a rapidly growing area.

At the age of 11, George began working in wheat and sugar beet fields and was the valedictorian at his grammar school graduation in 1921 (by the sixth grade, he had attended six schools). Locally owned buildings were demolished due to the Great Depression of 1920-21. His family moved to Salt Lake City in 1921, and although his father resurfaced building work, George became an expert at lath-and-plaster work. When the Great Depression struck in 1929 and ruined the family, it was restored to life. George watched his parents fail financially in Idaho and Utah and then have to wait a dozen years to pay off their debt. His life and work as a result of their struggles, he was inspired by their experiences.

Romney spent time in Salt Lake City at Roosevelt Junior High School and Latter-day Saints High School, which opened in 1922. He spent halftime on the football team, guard on the basketball squad, and right field on the baseball team, all with more energy than talent, but in an attempt to keep the family's sporting tradition, he received varsity letters in all three sports. He and junior Lenore LaFount were high school sweethearts in his senior year; he was from a more assimilated Mormon family. Romney was dependable academically, but unpopular. He graduated from high school in 1925 and his yearbook photo caption read: "Serious, high-minded, of noble spirit, a true fellow."

Romney spent the next year as a junior college student at Latter-day Saints University, where he was elected student body president in part. He served as president of the booster club and was a member of the Utah-Idaho Junior College Tournament.

Source

Early career, marriage and children

In late 1928, Romney returned to the United States and attended LDS Business College for a short time. He followed LaFount to Washington, D.C. in fall 1929, after her father, Harold A. Lafount, refused to serve on the Federal Radio Commission, according to her. He worked with the Massachusetts Democratic Caucuses. Senator David I. Walsh served as a stenographer using speedwriting first, then as a staff aide assisting with tariffs and other legislative issues during 1929 and 1930. Romney analyzed parts of the controversial Smoot-Hawley tariff bill and sat in on committee meetings; the job was a turning point in his career and gave him lifelong confidence in dealing with Congress.

At this time, Romney formed a dairy bar in Rosslyn, Virginia, with one of his brothers. In the midst of the Great Depression, the company crumbled quickly. At night, he also attended George Washington University. Romney was hired as an apprentice for Alcoa in Pittsburgh in June 1930 based on a family link.

As LaFount, a young actress who was still acting in Hollywood films, Romney agreed to be flown to Alcoa's Los Angeles office for training as a salesman. He attended night classes at the University of Southern California. (Romney did not attend for long, or graduate from, any of the colleges in which he was accepted for more than two years, amassing just 212 years of credit; rather, he was characterized as an autodidact.) While LaFount had the opportunity to sign a $50,000, three-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, Romney begged her to return to Washington with him as he was given a lobbyist position with Alcoa. She later said she regretted that she had never had the opportunity of both marriage and acting careers because the former would have upstaged him, but she had no regrets about selecting the former. Romney will later discuss wooing her his biggest sales hit.

The couple married at Salt Lake City Temple on July 2, 1931. They will have four children: Margo Lynn (born 1935), Jane LaFount (born 1938), George Scott (born 1941), and Willard Mitt (born 1947). The couple's marriage reflected certain aspects of their personalities and courtship. George was devoted to Lenore and promised to buy her a rose every day, sometimes a single rose with a love note. George had a strong, sarcastic personality, which had aided in winning arguments by will of will, but Lenore, who was more self-controlled, was both unintimidated and eager to fight back against him. The couple argued so much that their grandchildren would later affectionate them "the Bickersons," that they would be able to resolve their disagreement amicably, in the end.

Romney regularly campaigned for the aluminum industry against the copper industry, as a lobbyist, and defended Alcoa against allegations of monopoly. He also served for the Aluminum Wares Association. In the early 1930s, he helped build aluminum windows in the US Department of Commerce Building, the country's largest office building at the time.

Romney's playing golf at the National Press Club and the Burning Tree and Congressional Country Clubs; one reporter who was watching Romney hurriedly play golf at the last said, "There is a young man who knows where he is going." Lenore's cultural refinement and hosting skills, as well as her father's socioeconomic and political connections, helped George, and the couple visited the Hoovers, Roosevelts, and other well-known Washington figures. Pyke Johnson, a Denver newspaperman and automotive trade representative who attended the Press Club, was chosen by Pyke Johnson to serve on the newly formed Trade Association Advisory Committee to the National Recovery Administration. The committee's duties continued even after the department was declared unconstitutional in 1935. Romney served as president of the Washington Trade Association Executives from 1937 to 1938.

Source