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George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and Republican Party politician. He was 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 and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the husband of former Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Lenore Romney. Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico; events during the Mexican Revolution forced his family to flee back to the United States when he was a child. The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they struggled during the Great Depression. Romney worked in a number of jobs, served as a Mormon missionary in the United Kingdom, and attended several colleges in the U.S. but did not graduate from any. In 1939 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 headed a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share production improvements. He joined Nash-Kelvinator in 1948, and became the chief executive of its successor, American Motors Corporation, in 1954. There he turned around the struggling firm by focusing all efforts on the compact Rambler car. Romney mocked the products of the "Big Three" automakers as "gas-guzzling dinosaurs" and became one of the first high-profile, media-savvy business executives. Devoutly religious, he presided over the Detroit Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Having entered politics by participating in a state constitutional convention to rewrite the Michigan Constitution during 1961–1962, Romney was elected Governor of Michigan in 1962. Re-elected by increasingly large margins in 1964 and 1966, he worked to overhaul the state's financial and revenue structure, greatly expanding the size of state government and introducing Michigan's first state income tax. Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election. He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riot. Initially a front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 1968 election, he proved an ineffective campaigner and fell behind Richard Nixon in polls. After a mid-1967 remark that his earlier support for the Vietnam War had been due to a "brainwashing" by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, his campaign faltered even more and he withdrew from the contest in early 1968. Elected president, Nixon appointed Romney as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Romney's ambitious plans for housing production increases for the poor, and for open housing to desegregate suburbs, were modestly successful but often thwarted by Nixon. Romney left the administration at the start of Nixon's second term in 1973. Returning to private life, he advocated volunteerism and public service, and headed the National Center for Voluntary Action and its successor organizations from 1973 through 1991. He also served as a regional representative of the Twelve within his church. ==Early life and background== Romney's grandparents were polygamous Mormons who fled the United States with their children owing to the federal government's prosecution of polygamy. His maternal grandfather was Helaman Pratt (1846–1909), who presided over the Mormon mission in Mexico City before moving to the Mexican state of Chihuahua and who was the son of original Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt (1807–1857).〔〔 In the 1920s, Romney's uncle Rey L. Pratt (1878–1931) played a major role in the preservation and expansion of the Mormon presence in Mexico and in its introduction to South America. A more distant kinsman was George Romney (1734–1802), a noted portrait painter in Britain during the last quarter of the 18th century. Romney's parents, Gaskell Romney (1871–1955) and Anna Amelia Pratt (1876–1926), were United States citizens and natives of the Territory of Utah.〔〔Kranish; Helman, ''The Real Romney'', p. 40.〕〔 They married in 1895 in Mexico and lived in Colonia Dublán in Galeana in the state of Chihuahua (one of the Mormon colonies in Mexico), where George was born on July 8, 1907.〔 They practiced monogamy〔 (polygamy having been abolished by the 1890 Manifesto, although it persisted in places, especially Mexico).〔Ostling; Ostling, ''Mormon America'', pp. 87–89.〕 George had three older brothers, two younger brothers, and a younger sister.〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 53, 65.〕 Gaskell Romney was a successful carpenter, house builder, and farmer who headed the most prosperous family in the colony,〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 52–54.〕〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 39–40.〕 which was situated in an agricultural valley below the Sierra Madre Occidental.〔 The family chose U.S. citizenship for their children, including George. The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910 and the Mormon colonies were endangered in 1911–1912 by raids from marauders, including "Red Flaggers" Pascual Orozco and José Inés Salazar.〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 42–43.〕 Young George heard the sound of distant gunfire and saw rebels walking through the village streets.〔〔Mollenhoff, ''George Romney'', p. 24.〕 The Romney family fled and returned to the United States in July 1912, leaving their home and almost all of their property behind.〔〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 59–62.〕 Romney later said, "We were the first displaced persons of the 20th century."〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', p. 44.〕 In the United States, Romney grew up in humble circumstances.〔White, ''The Making of the President, 1968'', p. 36.〕 The family subsisted with other Mormon refugees on government relief in El Paso, Texas,〔 benefiting from a $100,000 fund for refugees that the U.S. Congress had set up. After a few months they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Gaskell Romney worked as a carpenter.〔〔''Current Biography Yearbook 1958'', p. 366.〕 In kindergarten, other children mocked Romney's national origin by calling him "Mex".〔〔Kotlowski, ''Nixon's Civil Rights'', p. 50.〕 In 1913, the family moved to Oakley, Idaho, and bought a farm, where they grew and subsisted largely on Idaho potatoes.〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 63–65.〕〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', p. 46.〕 The farm was not on good land and failed when potato prices fell.〔 The family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1916, where Gaskell Romney resumed construction work, but the family remained generally poor.〔 In 1917, they moved to Rexburg, Idaho, where Gaskell became a successful home and commercial builder in an area growing owing to high World War I commodities prices.〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 65–67.〕 George started working in wheat and sugar beet fields at the age of eleven and was the valedictorian at his grammar school graduation in 1921〔 (by the sixth grade he had attended six different schools).〔 The Depression of 1920–21 brought a collapse in prices and local building was abandoned.〔 His family returned to Salt Lake City in 1921, and while his father resumed construction, George became skilled at lath-and-plaster work.〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 68–69.〕〔''Current Biography Yearbook 1958'', p. 367.〕 The family was again prospering when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and ruined them.〔 George watched his parents fail financially in Idaho and Utah〔 and having to take a dozen years to pay off their debts.〔Mollenhoff, ''George Romney'', p. 30.〕 Seeing their struggles influenced his life and business career.〔 In Salt Lake City, Romney worked while attending Roosevelt Junior High School and, beginning in 1922, Latter-day Saints High School.〔〔Fuller, ''George Romney and Michigan'', p. 15.〕 There he played halfback in football, guard in basketball, and right field in baseball, all with more persistence than talent, but in an effort to uphold the family tradition of athleticism, he earned varsity letters in all three sports.〔〔〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 59–60.〕 In his senior year, he and junior Lenore LaFount became high school sweethearts;〔〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', p. 53.〕 she was from a more well-assimilated Mormon family.〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', pp. 53–55.〕 Academically, Romney was steady but undistinguished.〔Harris, ''Romney's Way'', p. 61.〕 He graduated from high school in 1925; his yearbook picture caption was "Serious, high minded, of noble nature—a real fellow."〔 Partly to stay near Lenore,〔 Romney spent the next year as a junior college student at the co-located Latter-day Saints University, where he was elected student body president.〔Mahoney, ''The Story of George Romney'', pp. 71–72.〕 He was also president of the booster club and played on the basketball team that won the Utah–Idaho Junior College Tournament.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「George W. 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