page_title: George W. Romney
section_title: Public service, volunteerism, and final years
hierarchical_section_title: George W. Romney / Public service, volunteerism, and final years
caption_attribution_description: Caption (from the University of Michigan): President Ford and David Mathews, former Secretary of HEW, meet with former Michigan Governor George Romney following a session of the Fourth Presidential Library Conference on the Public and Public Policy, held at the Gerald R. Ford Library, March 18-19, 1986.
context_page_description: George Wilcken Romney was an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he was chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969 and 3rd United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973. He was the father of Mitt Romney, the 70th Governor of Massachusetts, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and current United States Senator from Utah, husband of 1970 U.S. Senate candidate Lenore Romney and grandfather of current Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel.
  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 of them.
context_section_description: Romney was known as an advocate of public service, and volunteerism was a passion of his.  He initiated several volunteer programs while Governor of Michigan, and at the beginning of the Nixon administration chaired the Cabinet Committee on Voluntary Action. Out of this the National Center for Voluntary Action was created: an independent, private, non-profit organization intended to encourage volunteerism on the part of American citizens and organizations, to assist in program development for voluntary efforts, and to make voluntary action an important force in American society.  Romney's long interest in volunteerism stemmed from the Mormon belief in the power of institutions to transform the individual, but also had a secular basis.  At the National Center's first meeting on February 20, 1970, he said:
  Americans have four basic ways of solving problems that are too big for individuals to handle by themselves. One is through the federal government. A second is through state governments and the local governments that the states create. The third is through the private sector – the economic sector that includes business, agriculture, and labor. The fourth method is the independent sector – the voluntary, cooperative action of free individuals and independent association.  Voluntary action is the most powerful of these, because it is uniquely capable of stirring the people themselves and involving their enthusiastic energies, because it is their own – voluntary action is the people's action. ... As Woodrow Wilson said, "The most powerful force on earth is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people." Individualism makes cooperation worthwhile – but cooperation makes freedom possible.
  In 1973, after he left the cabinet, Romney became chair and CEO of the National Center for Voluntary Action.    In 1979, this organization merged with the Colorado-based National Information Center on Volunteerism and became known as VOLUNTEER: The National Center for Citizen Involvement; Romney headed the new organization. The organization simplified its name to VOLUNTEER: The National Center in 1984 and to the National Volunteer Center in 1990. Romney remained as chair of these organizations throughout this time.
  Within the LDS Church, Romney remained active and prominent, serving as patriarch of the Bloomfield Hills Stake and holding the office of regional representative of the Twelve, covering Michigan and northern Ohio.  As part of a longtime habit of playing golf daily, he had long ago concocted a "compact 18" format in which he played three balls on each of six holes, or similar formulations depending upon the amount of daylight.  During the early part of the Reagan administration, Romney served on the President's Task Force for Private Sector Initiatives along with LDS leader Monson.  In 1987, he held a four-generation extended family reunion in Washington, where he showed the places and recounted the events of his life which had occurred there.  Looking back on his and some other failed presidential bids, he once concluded, "You can't be right too soon and win elections."
  President George H. W. Bush's Points of Light Foundation was created in 1990, also to encourage volunteerism.  Romney received the Points of Light Foundation's inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from President Bush in April 1991.  The Bush administration wanted to tap Romney to chair the new foundation, but he reportedly refused to head two organizations doing the same thing and suggested they merge.  They did so in September 1991, and Romney became one of the founding directors of the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network.
  In the early 1990s, Romney was also involved in helping to set up the Commission on National and Community Service, one of the predecessors to the later Corporation for National and Community Service. He gave speeches emphasizing the vital role of people helping people,  and in 1993 inspired the first national meeting of volunteer centers.
  For much of his final two decades, Romney had been out of the political eye, but 
caption: George Romney with former President Gerald Ford and former Cabinet secretary David Mathews during a conference at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in 1986
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