Marion George Romney was born on September 19,1897 in Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico was a high-ranking official of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

His parents George Samuel Romney (1874-1935) and Teressa Redd Romney (1874-1964), who had come from the United States to spread the Gospel, he was a cousin of Michigan governor George W. Romney, who was also born in Colonia Juárez.

The following are some excerpts from his recollections of the exodus from Mexico:]

I'm a Mexican by birth. I was born in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. My parents happened to be down there at the time. I was raised there until I was about fifteen years old. During the last two or three of those years, the Madero Revolution was in progress. The rebels and the federalists were chasing each other through the country, each taking everything we colonists had, by way of arms and ammunition and by way of supplies. Finally we were forced to leave. I came out of Mexico with the Mormon refugees in 1912.

I remember I had a very thrilling experience on the way from where we lived to the railroad station about eight miles south of Colonia Juarez. We went in a wagon. . . . I was riding with my mother and her seven children and my uncle (her brother) and his family of about five or six children. . . . We had one trunk -- that was all we were able to bring. I was seated on the trunk in the back of the wagon. . . .

The Mexican rebel army was coming up the valley from the railroad station toward our town. They were not in formation. They were riding their saddle horses. Their guns were in the scab bards. Two of them stopped us and searched us. They said they were looking for guns. We didn't have any guns or ammunition. They did find $20 on my uncle -- pesos, not dollars. . . . They took that and then waved us on. They went up the road about as far as from here to the back of this room, stopped, turned around, drew their guns from their scabbards, and pointed them down the road at me. As I looked up the barrels of those guns, they looked like cannons to me. They didn't pull their triggers, however, as evidenced by the fact that I am here to tell the story. That was a very thrilling experience. One of my maturing experiences.

The rebels blew up the railroad track after the train we were on passed over it. Later, Father and the rest of the men came out to El Paso, Texas, on horseback. We never returned nor did we recover any of our property while my father lived.

Father and I went to work to earn a living for his large family. There were no welfare programs then. We had a difficult time making a living. We had to "root hog" or die. (Marion C. Romney, speech at Salt Lake Institute of Religion, October 78, 1974, quoted by James E. Faust, devotional address at BYU, February 21, 1978.)

All of my ancestors, since they joined the Church, have been driven from their homes because of their membership in this Church. I have often said that if there was any one of the Articles of Faith which my folks believed in above another, it was in being chaste [chased]." (British Area Conference, August 29, 1971, quoted in Howard, "Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith," 48).

[While in El Paso, Marion sold newspapers to raise money for food. His father worked as a carpenter and soon earned enough money to move his family into a small frame home. After several months, the family moved to Los Angeles, California and later to Oakley, Idaho.]

"One autumn afternoon George Romney took his two small sons and a visiting cousin, Marion Romney of Salt Lake City, to a football game at Ann Arbor, Michigan was much the better team but one of the opposing halfbacks reeled off long gains every time he got the ball.
"How can he do that?" cried Marion.
"Because he thinks he can," George answered, slapping his cousin's knee."

Marion G. Romney's 47 years as a General Authority of the Church began when he was the first person ever ordained an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when that position was created in 1941 (it was abolished in 1976). In 1951 he was advanced to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles himself,and served on that body until he became Second Counselor in the First Presidency when Harold B. Lee, with whom he had worked on the Church Welfare program, became Church President in 1972.

Lee's death the following year brought Spencer W. Kimball to the Church Presidency, but Kimball retained Romney and First Counselor Nathan Eldon Tanner in their positions. As Kimball, Tanner, and Romney all became octogenarians and developed health problems, it was decided to add an additional counselor in 1981 and Gordon B. Hinckley was chosen. Later that year Romney dedicated a temple deputizing for Kimball, but thereafter it was Hinckley who increasingly shouldered the burdens of the First Presidency. On Tanner's death in 1982 Romney was named First Counselor and Hinckley Second Counselor, but Romney was fairly inactive in this position; when Kimball died in 1985 press reports indicated Romney had not been seen in public for many months.

Ezra Taft Benson, who had been President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and thus heir apparent to Kimball, named Hinckley his First Counselor, while Romney, as the surviving Apostle ordained next after Benson, succeeded as of right to the position of President of the Twelve. However, in recognition of Romney's continuing ill health, Howard W. Hunter, who ranked next in seniority, was made Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve, and Romney was never formally set apart to his new position.

On Romney's death at age 90, the Church Almanac remembered him as a "renowned Church Welfare pioneer and Book of Mormon scholar".

Marion's wife Ida Olivia Jensen Romney died March 8, 1978.

Marion G. Romney died on May 20,1988 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

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