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Mitt Romney's life as a poor Mormon missionary in France questioned

Much of Mitt Romney’s life as a Mormon missionary in France was not as poor or arduous as he has claimed, say those who knew him at the time.

By Henry Samuel, Paris and Jon Swaine in Des Moines
7:45PM GMT 15 Dec 2011

It was a rare reflection by Mitt Romney on his life as a young Mormon, offered as proof to struggling Americans that despite being born into privilege and amassing a $250 million fortune, he too had known hard times.

A day after being labelled “out of touch” for casually offering a $10,000 bet to a rival candidate [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/8949478/US-election-2012-Mitt-Romney-risks-alienating-struggling-American-voters-with-10000-bet-remark.html ], Mr Romney told supporters he had experienced austerity as a missionary in France [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/8951177/US-election-2012-Mitt-Romney-seeks-to-limit-10000-bet-gaffe.html ], using a bucket for a lavatory and a hose for a shower. “You’re not living high on the hog at that kind of level,” he said.

But the Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion described by fellow American missionaries to The Daily Telegraph as “palace”. It featured stained glass windows, chandeliers, and an extensive art collection. It was staffed by two servants – a Spanish chef and a houseboy.

Although he spent time in other French cities, for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney’s stay. “I would describe it as a palace”.

Tearful as he described the house, Mr Anderson, 70, of Kaysville, Utah, said Romney aides had asked him not to speak publicly about their time together there.

The building, on Rue de Lota, was bought by the Mormons in 1952, having been seized by the Nazis during the Second World War. The Church sold it again in the 1970s, and it was until recently the embassy of the United Arab Emirates. It is currently worth as much as $12 million (£7.7 million).

Mr Romney moved into the building following a stay in Bordeaux, after being promoted to assistant to the president, Duane Anderson. He arrived in the spring of 1968, weeks before Paris erupted into riots, and returned to the US that December. He was given a room on the third floor.

“They were very big rooms,” said Christian Euvrard, the 72-year-old director of the Mormon-run Institute of Religion in Paris, who knew Mr Romney. “Very comfortable. The building had beautiful gilded interiors, a magnificent staircase in cast iron, and an immense hall.”

Mr Romney and his fellow missionaries worked ten-hour days from 6.30am trying to spread the word of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Several said that the future Governor of Massachusetts was a gifted doorstep salesman.

In his remarks this week, Mr Romney said of his French lodgings: “I don’t recall any of them having a refrigerator. We shopped before every meal”. Mr Anderson said that as well as a refrigerator, the mansion had “a Spanish chef called Pardo and a house boy, who prepared lunch and supper five days a week”.

It was “well equipped” with all modern conveniences, including a combination washer-dryer machine, Mr Anderson said. “I never saw anything like it in another private home at that time.”

Mr Romney added in his comments that “most of the apartments I lived in had no shower or bathtub”. He said: “If we were lucky, we actually bought a hose and we stuck it on the sink.” He said he was forced to use a hole in the ground and a bucket for a lavatory.

Jean Caussé, a 72-year-old Mormon who met Mr Romney in Bordeaux, said he “would be astonished” if that had been the case. “I never knew missionaries who had to do that,” he said. “I don’t see why he would have lived in conditions like that for two years when it was far from the general case”.

The mission home in Paris was fully plumbed and central heated. “All of the missionary rooms had something like a bath or a shower attached to it,” said Mr Anderson. “The home had several”.

This was in stark contrast to lodgings in working class areas given to other missionaries in Paris at the same time. “It was much better than the other places,” said one, Alan Eastman. “Most of us stayed in rented apartments quite a way from luxurious”.

Mr Eastman, 65, of Salt Lake City, Utah, recalled waking in one “spartan” apartment to “frost on my blanket”. A lavatory trip meant creeping past the owner’s vicious dog to an outhouse, he said.

Regarding spending money, Mr Romney “would have been on the same amount of money as the rest of us, about $125 per month,” said Mr Eastman – about $813 (£524) per month in today’s money.

But Mr Anderson said that while “we made a contribution for the common meals, I remember feeling that financially it was somewhat easier to be in the mission home”. Mr Romney said this week: “I lived in a way that people of lower middle income in France lived, and said to myself, 'Wow, I sure am lucky to have been born in the United States of America’.”

One of the mansion’s details stood out to several of the young Mormon men, whose faith banned them from courtship, among other perceived vices such as caffeine, nicotine and alcohol.

“It had beautiful stained glass windows, including a woman with bare breasts, which raised some eyebrows,” said Mr Eastman. “The windows depicted the four seasons,” said Mr Anderson. “Summer was lightly dressed, let’s put it that way”.

Mr Romney’s time in Paris was marked by tragedy when he, the president and the president’s wife were involved in a car crash as he drove them back from Bordeaux in June 1968. Mrs Anderson was killed and Mr Romney, who had not been at fault, was admitted to hospital after initially being presumed dead.

When the president returned to the US for surgery, J. Fielding Nelson, the president of the Geneva mission, was sent to Paris to take over. But Mr Romney had things so under control that he soon returned to Switzerland. “It was astonishing,” Mr Nelson said. “This 20-year-old kid was running it”.

Mr Anderson said that Mr Romney’s Mormon allies were eager to cite this as an example of his natural leadership skills. But it is “a story that his campaign doesn’t want spread around,” he said. He declined to say who on the Romney team made this request. “I’ve been in email contact with his eldest son Tagg, who is an old friend,” he said. “Tagg basically does what the campaign says”.

One Mormon friend who has known Mr Romney for decades said: “The campaign’s line is that whenever people talk about his missionary time, people try to make him sound like a kook”.

Spokesmen for Mr Romney did not respond to a request for comment.

*Additional reporting by Devorah Lauter in Paris

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© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/8959440/US-election-2012-Mitt-Romneys-life-as-a-poor-Mormon-missionary-in-France-questioned.html [with images that can't be embedded here, and comments]


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Mitt Romney's life of privilege and success

Mitt Romney's life is a story of success and achievement but one that is also dogged by accusations of over-privilege and poltical shape-shifting.

By Raf Sanchez, Washington
8:38PM GMT 15 Dec 2011

He is the son of George Romney, the chief executive of the American Motors Corporation and later the Governor of Michigan. The older man was born into a humble family but by the time his youngest child, Willard Mitt, was born in 1947 he had amassed a substantial fortune from his work in the auto industry. Mitt was named after J Willard Marriott, the hotel owner, who was his father's best friend.

Romney grew up in Bloomfield Hills, an affluent city outside of Detroit, and attended state school until he was 11, when he transferred to Cranbrook, a nearby private institution. Although not academically brilliant, Romney was known as a lively character who enjoyed pranks, including apparently dressing as a police officer to startle friends who had taken girlfriends to well-known beauty spots.

While at Cranbrook he began seeing Ann Davies, a student at a sister school whom he had known since childhood. They would marry in 1969 and have five sons together.

Romney spent a year at Stanford University as the protest movement against the Vietnam War began to build momentum. Among the long hair and ragged clothes of his classmates, Romney stood out both for his smart appearance and his ardent support of the war.

He left California to spend 30 months in France as part of the missionary programme undertaken by most young Mormons. He learned to speak French fluently and traveled widely across the country but made few converts. Romney was in France for the 1968 student revolts but maintained his support for the war and remained culturally conservative. In June of that year his car was hit by another vehicle, killing one of his passengers.

In 1968 his father also ran for president. Like his son 40 years later, George Romney had the tall and handsome appearance befitting of a resident of the White House but his position on the Vietnam War appeared to change throughout the campaign and he was beaten to the Republican nomination by Richard Nixon.

The younger Romney returned to the US and enrolled at Brigham Young, a Mormon university in Utah, where Ann was also a student. From there he went on to take a law degree and a masters in business at Harvard.

For the next 30 years his life would be based in Massachusetts, a hot bed of American liberalism and a staunchly Democratic state. He began a career as a management consultant and in 1984 helped found a new private equity firm, Bain Capital. Although profitable and helping Romney earn a fortune now estimated to be worth around $200 million (£129 million), his time at Bain has provided ammunition for political opponents because the company's takeovers often involved steep lay-offs.

Romney stepped down from Bain Capital to take on Ted Kennedy, the veteran US Senator and youngest brother of President John Kennedy, in the 1994 senate race. It was the first of many times he would be portrayed as "a flip-flopper" with the elder statesman attacking him for seemingly shifting position on abortion. Romney lost by 17 points in a year where Democrats were defeated all over the country.

In 1999, he became the head of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which was mired in financial and organisational difficulties. Romney received wide praise for rescuing the venture and was boosted to national attention for the first time.

He used the momentum to stage a successful to become Governor of Massachusetts, serving from 2003 - 2007. Working with a Democratic legislature he introduced wide-ranging healthcare reform, requiring almost all of the state's inhabitants to buy health insurance. Although cheered at the time, the law has become a weakness for Romney as he takes fire on it from his Republican primary opponents.

By the end of his term as governor, Romney had developed strong "Potomac fever" - the urge to run for the White House. He launched his bid just weeks after stepping down and ran a slick and corporate campaign. But his well-funded effort in Iowa was overturned by the evangelical former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, and he lost in New Hampshire to John McCain, the eventual nominee.

After McCain was defeated in November 2008, Romney almost immediately began to plan for a 2012 election run against the new president, Barack Obama. He campaigned vigorously for Republicans in the 2010 cycle, maintained many of his staff through his political action committee and wrote a book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, where he laid out his political philosophy.

By June of 2011 he had once again embarked on the long and bumpy road towards the presidency.

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/8959601/US-Election-2012-Mitt-Romneys-life-of-privilege-and-success.html [with comment]