Lenore Romney

Lenore Romney, the wife and mother of presidential candidates (Michigan Governor George Romney and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney), was the First Lady of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, when her husband George became President Richard Nixon's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Before becoming governor of the Wolverine State, George had been a successful business executive and the fist C.E.O. of American Motors from 1954 to 1962. Born Lenore LaFount in Logan, Utah on November 9, 1908, she was the daughter of Harold Arundel LaFount, an English immigrant and Mormon who later was appointed to the Federal Radio Commission by President Calvin Coolidge. Her high school sweetheart George Romney, who was born in the Mormon Colony in Mexico but whose family moved to Utah due to the upheavals caused by the 1911 Mexican Revolution, continued to woo her after she moved to Washington, D.C. She was an aspiring actress who gave up a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to marry George in 1931. They were married for 64 years, until George's death in 1995. In addition to Mitt, their last child, they had another son and two daughters, and many grand-children. George's business career took them to Michigan, where they set down roots as he became an automobile industry executive then politician. In 1970, Lenore ran for the U.S. Senate. The Machiavellian Nixon had wanted to oust her husband George, who had been his rival for the 1968 Republican Presidential nomination, from his administration, but Romney was too respected to fire. Nixon urged him to run against incumbent Democratic Senator Philip Hart, but Lenore ran instead. She lost in the general election. Lenore Romney died on July 7, 1998 and was buried next to her husband in Fairview Cemetery in Brighton, Michigan. She was 89 years old.