Free The Real Romney by Michael Kranish, Scott Helman Page A

exiles to receive food and lodging. Initially, the Romneys’ stay on U.S. soil was to be temporary. The El Paso Herald reported on October 25, 1912, that Gaskell Romney and his family, including little George, had gone to Los Angeles “until it is safe for his family to return to the colonies” in Mexico. But Gaskell’s family would never return to live there and made only a sentimental trip years later. Had they returned for good, Mitt Romney might never have been in a position to run for president.
    T he Romneys moved from house to house, from California to Idaho to Utah, as they rebuilt their lives. Gaskell once again became prosperous, constructing some of the finest homes in Salt Lake City and becoming bishop of the church’s wealthiest ward, where he might have overseen five hundred members. But during the Great Depression, he “lost all he had and more,” according to a family biography. The Romneys left their three-story home and moved into a rented bungalow. “Even though Father was driven out of Mexico penniless . . . he didn’t make me feel poor,” George wrote about Gaskell. “He never took out bankruptcy, which he could have done several times.”
    Gaskell regained his financial footing with help from an unlikely source: Mexico. He had never given up trying to obtain financial compensation from the Mexican government for losing his family property. Twenty-six years after the Romneys were forced from Mexico, the case of Gaskell Romney v. United States of Mexico was finalized in Salt Lake City in 1938. Gaskell requested $26,753 in damages. He was awarded $9,163, court records show—a sizable amount in the post-Depression years. The records say that Gaskell was to give half of the award to his son George, helping to set the family on firmer financial footing in the United States.
    The Romneys had come an extraordinary distance from the day in 1841 when Miles Archibald Romney, convinced of the truth of Mormonism, had set sail for America. His son Miles Park had devoted his life to his faith and family and religious salvation and ended his days in Mexico, but in a roundabout way he had enabled succeeding generations of his family to have their chance at the American dream. He could hardly have imagined that a grandson would be governor of Michigan and run for the presidency, or that a great-grandson would be governor of Massachusetts and also seek the presidency. But the generational line passed along much: not just the angular physical characteristics, not just the fidelity to Mormon faith, but also a worldview grounded in the family’s ancestral story of flight and persecution and rebuilding. The family would cycle through utter poverty and unimaginable wealth, but the Romneys would say over the years that what they held in common was clear, that they were builders all, from the carpenters to the politicians, each son trying to accomplish what the father had left undone.
    T oday, about forty Romneys remain in Colonia Juárez, many of them living in the brick houses built by their Romney ancestors and attending school in the Academia Juárez, funded by the Mormon Church. They are descendants of some family members who, after fleeing to Texas during the revolution, did return to Mexico. Schoolchildren bound through the hallways and across a soccer field in the shadow of the same mountains that Miles P. Romney first eyed many years ago. A Mormon temple, perched on a hilltop, is brilliantly lit at night and topped by the gold-leafed figure of the angel Moroni.
    Amid all this lives a man named Mike Romney, whose life has striking parallels with Mitt Romney’s. Mike and Mitt Romney are both great-grandsons of Miles P. and Hannah Romney. Their grandfathers were brothers. Mitt is one year older than Mike. It seems only a twist of fate that Mike Romney lives today in Mexico and has worked as a widely respected school administrator while Mitt Romney lives in the United States and twice has sought the