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.

He launched an effort to accelerate the conversions of French people, complete with more ambitious numerical goals. And he kept his anguish to himself.

"There's nothing like hard work and time to heal the pain and sorrow of a tragic loss," Romney said. "What we do with our time is not for frivolity, but for meaning."

'Miracle' birth

For Mitt Romney, life began with high drama.

On March 13, 1947, George Romney, a rising star in the auto industry who was often described as a man in a hurry, took time out to write to the relatives and colleagues he'd missed during the previous day's blizzard of telegrams and phone calls.

"Dear Folks," Romney wrote on the letterhead of the Automobile Manufacturers Association, where he served as general manager, "Well, by now most of you have had the really big news, but for those who haven't, Willard Mitt Romney arrived at Ten AM March 12." The new baby was not the first but rather the fourth born to Romney and his wife, Lenore. Yet as the paragraphs flowed, and Romney detailed how precarious his wife's pregnancy had been, it became clear there was a special level of wonderment embedded in this announcement, in this birth.

"A couple of years ago, the Doctor told Lenore that her condition would not permit her to have another child and that she would have to undergo a major operation," Romney wrote. "However, she had a lot of faith."

After delivery, he wrote, the doctor examined Lenore and announced in amazement, "I don't see how she became pregnant, or how she carried the child." Romney summed it up this way: "We consider it a blessing for which we must thank the Creator of all." From then on, Lenore referred to Mitt as "my miracle baby."

His sisters were nearly 12 and 9 at the time, his brother almost 6, and they didn't wait long to begin the debate over whether to call the baby "Bill" or "Mitt." The Willard was in honor of J. Willard Marriott, a family friend and future hotel magnate, and the Mitt was a nod to Milton "Mitt" Romney, a cousin of George's and former Chicago Bears quarterback. By the time Mitt settled on his preferred name in kindergarten, the family had moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills.