The series  » Series link — Special report from The Boston Globe

BERNOS-BEAULAC, France — By the time he saw the Mercedes barreling into his lane, there was nothing Mitt Romney could do.

He was 21, buoyed by a recent promotion, a young man finally on his way. Two years of getting doors slammed in his face as an LDS missionary in France had tested him as nothing before in his privileged life, revealing a drive and seriousness that had been absent during his breezy childhood. Now he was the assistant to the president, a top job in the French mission, and behind the wheel of a luxury Citroen packed with church officials visiting congregations in southern France.

He knew these roads were dangerous. That very afternoon in June 1968, on the way from Pau to Bordeaux, he had pulled over to remove a roof rack lying in the middle of the road, a remnant of an earlier accident.

His own crash was swift and brutal. The Mercedes, driven southbound by a Catholic priest, passed a truck, missed a curve and shot into the northbound lane at a high rate of speed.

"It happened so quickly that, as I recall, there was no braking and no honking, it was like immediate," Romney said in a recent interview. "I remember sort of being hood-to-hood. And then pretty much the next thing I recall was waking up in the hospital."

Trapped between the steering column and the driver's-side door, Romney lost consciousness. The president of the mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, H. Duane Anderson, was seriously injured on the other side.

Anderson's wife, Leola, who had been sitting between them, bore the brunt of the impact. Crushed in the wreckage, she survived long enough to speak her dying words in an ambulance to a Frenchwoman who couldn't understand what she was saying.

Sister Anderson, as she was called within the small world of Mormons in France, was a beloved den mother to the 200 missionaries. Her husband was physically and emotionally broken and returned to the United States to bury his wife and salve his wounds.

Romney responded differently. Since birth, his parents had invested great ambition in their youngest child. Yet his sheltered life had given him few opportunities to show himself worthy of such expectations. Now, with tragedy in the French mission, and chaos in the late 1960s air, Romney emerged as a leader. In President Anderson's absence, the 21-year-old helped direct the mission.