in january, 2007, romney choreographs his exit from the state house with ann by his side. it s a great state, great people. it s an honor i will never forget. that same year, 2007, romney embarks on his first and ultimately failed presidential primary bid. i am honored today to give my full support to senator mccain s candidacy for the presidency. but now after a second try, willard mitt romney is the republican nominee for president of the united states. he s a far better candidate in 2012 than he was in 2008.
who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and then was successfully treated for breast cancer in 2009. if ann were unable, if she were really struggling with ms, our entire priority would be focused on keeping her well and helping her. i remember with the olympics for instance, we were getting ready for a wheelchair and an elevator in the house to get her to the second floor. by the time the olympics game, she ran the olympic torch into salt lake city. that s how much progress physically she had made. though up for the 2012 run, ann wasn t sure she was emotionally ready after that failed presidential campaign in 2008. i told mitt four years ago, i would never do this again. i said never again. never again. this is it. this is too hard. this is too difficult. it takes too much out of you. never again. however, i m 100% committed. she was the one that said i had to do it. when he announces his
his future wife. mrs. romney went to kingswood, which was the accompanying girls school for cranbrook. it was a fairly tight community. fairly hermetically sealed. so you, you know, there would be dances with the kingswood girls and interactions and things of that nature. like his father, ann would become a lode star in romney s emotional universe. she is an emotional center for his life. she s a lynchpin for him. and emotionally and i think an important part of everything that he does. my appreciation to her for what an extraordinary friend, sweetheart, and counselor she is. ann? when he goes away to college at stanford, mitt flies home many weekends to court ann who was still in high school. after his freshman year when it is time to go on his mormon mission, it is ann who urges him to go.
his dad during his first successful run for governor of michigan in 1962. i actually went on the minivan that went from county fair to county fair, set up booths and would speak to people, explain why they should vote for my dad. i was 15. and it taught me a lot about how people make their decisions on matters of politics. oh, god of light and universal truth from middle school on, romney attends the cranbrook school. it s an all boy s prep school in bloomfield hills, michigan. one of his classmates is sidney barthwell, the only african american in romney s class. cranbrook at the time was all male. i think it was about 430 students. seventh grade through 12th grade which was called first forum through the sixth forum. it was modeled after the english boarding school. it is also at cranbrook that mitt romney meets ann lois davies.
was unconscious and he wrote in my passport, he is dead. in french. that made it to the papers in michigan that george romney s son had been killed in an automobile accident. so my dad called sergeant schreiber, the u.s. ambassador to france, asked the ambassador if he could look into it and they sent a representative to this little hospital i was in and sure enough, i was alive. but one of the passengers in the car, the wife of the leader of the mormon mission in france, she was killed. so this had a big impact on mitt romney. when he returns home, romney is a changed person. now deeply committed to his family s religion. he attends the mormon church s brigham young university along with ann davies. mitt and ann marry and eventually move to boston where romney gets a difficult combined mba and law degree from harvard. the romneys settle in massachusetts and mitt serves in higher and higher official positions in the mormon church. first as a bishop, then as head of the boston stake