• Romney grew up in Bloomfield Hills, studied in Cranbrook
High School and enjoyed a breezy, privileged childhood.

• His parents' cottage on the Canadian shores of Lake
Huron, Ontario is one place that holds his most cherished
childhood memories.

• He always idolized his father, George Romney and whiled
away his childhood days sitting on his father's lap, watching him
read the paper.

• Romney characterizes his mother as someone who lived by
adages often quoting her favorite ones, "If not me, who? If not
now, when? If not here, where?"

• Romney's elite classmates wanted to grow up to be
professional athletes or the president of America, he aspired to
run a car company like his father.

• Romney's classmate Jim Bailey says of him, "He was in
many ways the antithesis of what he's portrayed as today." Romney
once competed in a 2.5 mile race, finally crossing the finish
line around ten minutes after the last runner. Bailey remembers,
"It had to be one of those moments that made you feel inadequate
but those kinds of things didn't bother him."

• During the six years that he studied at Cranbrook
school, Romney never showed himself to be a leader. Nevertheless,
he was a kinetic kid who loved to pull off pranks.


• Mitt Romney shared his father's front-row seat on
government, first as a campaign aide and then as an intern in the
governor's office.

• Both of Romney's parents dabbled in politics, so it
comes as no surprise that Romney ended up doing the same.
		

• Born of a Kenyan father and an American mother, Barack
Obama's childhood has been a mélange of diverse cultural climates
that helped imbibe in him a deep-seated respect for different
traditions.

• Obama talks thus of his multi-racial childhood, "my
father looked nothing like the people around me - that he was
black as pitch, my mother white as milk - barely registered in my
mind."

• Throughout his childhood years, Obama was known both at
home and at school as 'Barry'.

• Up to the age of ten, Obama lived with his mother Ann
Dunham, step-father and half-sister, in the populous Muslim
country of Indonesia. His childhood in Jakarta differed vastly
from his formative years in Honolulu under the care of his
maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham.

• Obama attended the local schools and was a Cub Scout
while living in Jakarta, Indonesia where classes were taught in
the Indonesian language.

• In 1971, he moved to Hawaii to live with his
grandparents in their downtown apartment while attending the
prestigious Punahou where Obama remembers 'feeling like a misfit'
in his 'Indonesian sandals' and struggling with his racial
identity.

• Obama also proudly remembers "the opportunity that
Hawaii offered... became an integral part of my world view, and a
basis for the values that I hold most dear".

• Obama's first boyhood four-bedroom, single-storey home
can still be seen on the Kalaniana'ole Highway, in the Kuli'ou'ou
area between 'Aina Haina and Hawai'i Ka.i.