7 Incredible Personal Stories About Mitt Romney That You May Not Know (with links)
By John Hawkins 9/25/2012
Over the last few months, it has been absolutely stunning to see Mitt
Romney, of all people, portrayed as some sort of greedy, ruthless, unfeeling
corporate raider who plows over everyone who gets in his way so he can make a
few dollars more. Of all the criticisms you could aim at Mitt Romney, there is
none that has less validity than that one. In fact, the vast majority of people
who read this column -- whether they're liberal, conservative, or moderate --
probably don't personally know a single person who has proven to be more
generous and compassionate than Mitt Romney. Yes, really. It's okay if you're
skeptical -- but, you won't be after you finish reading this column.
1) Mitt Romney saved the life of a 14 year
old girl: Imagine what it would be like if we could have
this kind of decisive people-centered leadership in the
White House..
In 1998 the 14-year-old daughter of one of Romney's partners
at Bain Capital, Robin Gay, had disappeared after attending a rave party in New
York City. The distraught father was beside himself
with terror of what may have happened to his little girl.
Upon hearing of this, Romney stopped all operations at Bain and flew himself
and all of the company's employees to New York
to conduct the search. Using his contacts with establishments in New York that
did business with Bain and an outlay of cash, Romney led a search for the girl
from a command post he had set up in the LaGuardia Marriott that involved a
private detective, Bain employees and customers putting up posters, handing out
flyers, and interviewing prostitutes, drug addicts, and other street people in
New York, and coordination with the New York Police.
A break came, after media publicity of the search, when a teenage boy called
a tip line asking if there was a reward. He hung up, but not before the police
traced the call to a home in New Jersey.
The girl was found in the basement of the house undergoing withdrawals from a
hit of ecstasy.
Romney, through his efforts, had saved the girl's life.
2) Mitt Romney gave milk to a V.A.
hospital: This is the kind of thing
Mitt Romney has done for people in need who cross his
path.
He shared a story of a V.A. hospital in Boston
that Mitt Romney stopped at while on the campaign trail running against Ted
Kennedy. Ted Kennedy had made a thirty minute stop at the same location a
couple of weeks prior.
After touring the V.A. hospital, Mitt asked to look at their books. After he
spent forty minutes going through their books, he told them, “You run a very
good place, very tight. Very good.” Romney asked to go on another tour of the
hospital, and after spending an hour and forty minutes there, the last question
he asked was, “So what… what do you -- what are you lacking? What do you need
help with?”
The response? “Milk.”
Since the press was around, snapping photos and asking questions, Glenn
explained that Romney did a really awkward joke where he said, “maybe we should
teach everyone here how to milk a cow.”
Of course, that’s all the press cared to hear and ran with a story that
claims “Mitt Romney says veterans should have to milk cows.”
“This is where it gets good,” Glenn started. “Romney calls him up the next
morning.”
Romney first apologizes to the man who runs the hospital for any problems
the attention from the press jumping on his words brought to the hospital. He
next offers to help with the milk situation.
“Friday comes, and the milkman comes,” Glenn continues. “This is what the
vets needed – they needed 7,000 pints of milk a week. Milkman shows up, 7,000
pints. The head of the V.A. hospital asks, ‘Where did all this come from?’ He
[the milkman] said ‘an anonymous donor.’ Now, the guy didn’t put it together.”
Glenn explains that when the next week rolled around, the milkman shows up
again, and continued to show up every week for two years. After two years of
delivering 7,000 pints of milk a week to the hospital, as the milkman is
retiring, the man finally gets him to reveal the anonymous donor.
It’s Mitt Romney.
“Mitt Romney was writing a personal check and didn’t want anybody to know
for two years and provided the vets with all of their milk in Boston,”
Glenn explained to listeners this morning.
When Romney became governor, he sent a bill through to help the V.A.
hospital – it was down to the dollar.
3) Mitt Romney helped a dying 14 year old
boy write his will: In a profession filled with people who steal the
credit for every good thing that happens and pass the buck at every
opportunity, Mitt Romney's humility -- which is a wonderful trait in a human
being, but a maladaptive one in a politician -- has kept him from hammering
home stories like this in every swing state.
Pat Oparowski talks about the loving friendship Mitt Romney
developed with her dying son David, remembering,
"David, knowing Mitt had gone to law school at Harvard, asked Mitt
if he would help him write a will. He had some prize possessions that he wanted
to make sure were given to his closest friends and family. The next time Mitt
went to the hospital, he was equipped with his yellow legal pad and pen.
Together, they made David’s will. That is a task that no child should ever have
to do. But it gave David peace of mind. So after David’s death, we were able to
give his skateboard, his model rockets, and his fishing gear to his best
friends. He also made it clear that his brother Peter should get his Ruger .22
rifle. How many men do you know who would take the time out of their busy lives
to visit a terminally ill 14 year old and help him settle his affairs?"
David also helped us plan his funeral. He wanted to be buried in his Boy
Scout uniform. He wanted Mitt to pronounce his eulogy, and Mitt was there to
honor that request. We will be ever grateful to Mitt for his love and concern.”
Ted Oparowski summed it up nicely when he said,
"You cannot measure a man’s character based on the words he utters
before adoring crowds during times that are happy. The true measure of a man is
revealed in his actions during times of trouble — the quiet hospital room of a
dying boy, with no cameras and no reporters."
4) At one point, Mitt Romney was doing
10-20 hours a week of volunteer church service: At the Republican
National Convention, Mitt Romney's friend and fellow church member
Grant
Bennett talked about the Mitt Romney he knew.
While raising his family and pursuing his career, Mitt
Romney served in our church, devoting 10, 15, and even 20 hours a week doing
so. ...Drawing on the skills and resources of those in our congregation, Mitt
provided food and housing, rides to the doctor, and companions to sit with
those who were ill. He shoveled snow and raked leaves for the elderly. He took
down tables and swept floors at church dinners. He was often the last to leave.
Mitt challenged each of us to find our life by losing it in service to others.
He issued that challenge again and again.
What do you think the chances are that the current occupant of the White
House would voluntarily shovel snow and rake leaves for the elderly without any
television cameras around?
5) Pam Finlayson talks about how Mitt
Romney treated her family and her extremely ill child: Pam Finlayson
gave one of the finest speeches at the Republican National Convention when she
talked about her family's experience with Mitt Romney.
Later, when Finlayson and her husband Grant had a baby girl
born dangerously premature, the man who decades later would stand at the
threshold of the presidency was a steady and supportive presence at the
hospital.
“Kate was so tiny and very sick,” Finlayson recalled. “Her lungs not yet
ready to breathe, her heart unstable, and after suffering a severe brain
hemorrhage at three days old, she was teetering on the very edge of life.”
“As I sat with her in intensive care, consumed with a mother’s worry and
fear, dear Mitt came to visit and pray with me,” she continued, as the partisan
crowd listened in rapt silence. “I will never forget that when he looked down
tenderly at my daughter, his eyes filled with tears, and he reached out gently
and stroked her tiny back.”
“I could tell immediately that he didn’t just see a tangle of plastic and
tubes; he saw our beautiful little girl, and he was clearly overcome with
compassion for her.”
The little girl was slated for surgery around Thanksgiving, and Finlayson
recalled Romney and his sons showing up with a Thanksgiving feast for the
preoccupied parents. Finlayson said she later learned from Ann Romney that the
food had been prepared by her husband.
Kate Finlayson survived, and the two families remained close, said
Finlayson, who even babysat for the five “rambunctious” Romney sons before the
family moved from Boston.
Last year, Kate Finlayson died at age 26 from complications she’d battled
from birth, her mom said. And although Romney was in the midst of preparing his
bid for the presidency, they remembered their old friends in yet another hour
of anguish.
“When they heard of Kate’s passing, both Mitt and Ann paused, to personally
reach out to extend us sympathy, and express their love,” Finlayson said.
“When the world looks at Mitt Romney, they see him as the founder of a
successful business, the leader of the Olympics, or a governor,” she said.
“When I see Mitt, I know him to be a loving father, man of faith and caring and
compassionate friend."
6) Mitt Romney and his sons saved a
family and their dog from drowning: Mitt Romney saw people in
trouble and he didn't wait for the government to save them, he made a REAL
gutsy call, and
did what he had to do to save their lives.
But way back in the summer of 2003, the then-Massachusetts
governor made the news for a very different reason: He helped save a Tewksbury
family from drowning in New Hampshire’s
Lake Winnipesaukee.
The Morrisseys of Tewksbury were motoring their vintage wooden boat through
the large lake on July 4 weekend that year when, around sunset and about 300
yards from shore, the vessel began taking on water. Robert Morrissey attempted
to dial 911 on his cell phone, only to lose the device in the water as the boat
started sinking rapidly.
That’s when Romney, who owns a home on the shore of the lake, and two of his
sons jumped on jet skis and rode out to assist the six people, along with the
family dog, struggling in the water.
The Romneys took two of the passengers ashore, and others in the area helped
the rest of the family—and the dog, too — make it back to land without injury.
7) Mitt Romney pays for the college
education of two boys who were left as quadriplegics after a car wreck:
As you read this, imagine how you'd feel about Mitt Romney if you were Mark and
Sheryl Nixon. Americans would be fortunate to have someone like Mitt Romney
doing his best to try to help them.
Mark and Sheryl Nixon, along with their sons Reed and Rob
and their daughter Natalie, told of a car accident that left Reed and Rob
quadriplegics. Although the Nixon family knew of Romney and Romney had served
as their Mormon stake president, they weren't well acquainted.
Reed and Rob returned home from rehab in the late fall, near Christmas, Mark
said. Around that time, Romney called and said he'd like to do something for
the two boys. So Romney, his wife Ann, and three of their sons brought
Christmas gifts to the family.
While Romney later offered to pay for Reed and Rob's entire college
education, that Christmas Eve visit stands out in Mark's mind, he said, because
instead of vacationing in Utah, New
England or the Caribbean, the Romney family
was visiting the needy.
"That actually, to me, has been more important to me than the financial
help he gave," Mark said.
"After the initial experience of showing up, he didn't check that off
his list and say, 'I did my duty,'" Natalie added. "He has, year
after year, shown up at 5K races to run the event and participate."
