“NANTES, France — Elder Romney didn’t even have time to put on his shoes.
The 19-year-old missionary was in his apartment when a woman burst in to say some Frenchmen were beating up one of his fellow Mormons down the street.
The barefoot Mitt Romney, who had been in France for just six months, joined his roommates in rushing into the snowy night.
They found a team of rugby players, drowning their sorrows after a lost match, hassling two female missionaries. The women had cried out “Allez-y!” which means “go on,” rather than “Allez-vous en,” meaning “go away.” The male missionary who leapt to their defense had been punched out. Romney ended up with a badly bruised jaw.
“There were about 20 guys, very large and very muscular, and we were a group of very young and very small American guys,” Romney would recall 40 years later. “If you get into a fight with Muhammad Ali, you don’t return the punch, you just put your arms up.”
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But his family’s history, like that of his church, is an ever-present part of his life: In the first-floor hallway of his home the portraits of five generations of Romneys hang in an unbroken line: Miles Archibald, Miles Park, Gaskell, George and Mitt.”
Jenny Hatch
FYI Mormon missionaries are still getting beat up, My nephew Michael had his nose broken and his shoulder dislocated last year by a couple of drunks in the Ukraine.
Natural Family Blog 🌹 Jenny Hatch 