Romney: "We had many, many seedlings of pine trees"

Americans know your policy positions, but they don’t know you well as a person. Tell me how your father, George, influenced you.

My dad was a carpenter who never completed college, yet he went on to be CEO of American Motors and governor of Michigan. At home, he filled us with the conviction that life was not handed to us on a silver platter. He made sure my brother and I mowed the lawn, shoveled the driveway. When he ran for president and his tax returns were published, it was clear he could’ve hired a landscaper. But he decided we would learn to work with our hands.

Did he get you up early in the morning to go do the chores?

Yeah, the early morning chores began with the snow shoveling. We had a long driveway and a lot of snow in Michigan. The lawn mowing was not early in the morning. That was Saturdays. We had many, many seedlings of pine trees he planted on the bank around our home, and I was required twice a week to water all of these seedlings and then pull the weeds out from around them. We had a large flower bank or a vine bank in the backyard, which required constant weeding, the task I disliked the most.