Romney’s namesake rests in LR cemetery

LITTLE ROCK — Beneath a modest stone marker in Roselawn Memorial Park in Little Rock lies a little-known link to the presidential campaign.

Six feet under, in a steel vault, Mitt Romney rests for eternity.

Not the current GOP nominee, who is in robust health at age 65, but his namesake and a distant relative: Milton A. Romney, who died in 1975 after spending the last years of his life in Arkansas.

Milton A. “Mitt” Romney gained a measure of fame in his life, not as a politician, but on the gridiron.

For five years during the 1920s, he starred at quarterback for the Chicago Bears, playing in the same backfield as George Halas and Red Grange. Romney’s wife, Patricia, told the Arkansas Gazette in 1989 that she first met her husband on a visit to Chicago in the lobby of the Parkway Hotel.

He phoned that night and requested a date. She said “no,” but he kept calling - even after she returned home to Arkansas.

The couple eventually married.

Back in the early days of the National Football League, million-dollar salaries were still in the distant future. Patricia Romney said her husband was a stockbroker during the week and played football on the weekends for $50 a game.

Romney, who was born in Salt Lake City in 1899, played college football for the University of Utah and University of Chicago. He earned the nickname “Utah Flash,” bestowed by no less than the writer and newspaperman Damon Runyon after Romney led the University of Chicago team to victory over Princeton in 1921, according to Romney’s November 1975 obituary in the Arkansas Democrat.

Presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and the son of former Michigan Gov. George Romney, got his first name from J. Willard Marriott, a family friend and the founder of the Marriott Corp. His middle name is a tribute to Milton “Mitt” Romney.

The Romney campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment last week, but in February, the candidate visited The Mitt restaurant in Mount Clemens, Mich., and told a crowd how he’d ended up with his distinctive name.

“My dad had a cousin whose name was Mitt Romney, and this was in the 1920s and he was the quarterback for the Chicago Bears,” Romney said, according to a story by Reuters. “So they thoughtby naming me Mitt Romney I’d get extraordinary athletic ability.”

The anecdote amused the crowd. Romney told them: “Yeah, your laugh is exactly right - that did not happen.”

Milton and Patricia Romney had no children. Patricia died in 1997. They had moved to Mountain Home in 1967 before relocating to central Arkansas, according to the Gazette story.

A graveside service for Romney on Nov. 12, 1975, was officiated by Charles Casteel, a United Methodist minister. No religion was mentioned for Romney on burial forms, which is unusual, said Mary Love, office manager for Roller-Owens Funeral Home in North Little Rock.

Today, Romney’s flat marker lies almost level with the grass on the southern end of the Little Rock cemetery. Nearby, cars along Roosevelt Road swish past the open, sunny spot.

State Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb, who didn’t know about the state’s Romney connection, said having the GOP nominee’s namesake buried in Little Rock may help Romney win in Pulaski County. Romney is already expected to easily carry the state.

“They say you can’t win a county if you don’t have a grandfather buried there. He’s not a grandfather, but he’s pretty close,” Webb said.

At the time of Milton Romney’s death, he and his wife lived at 409 Libby Lane in North Little Rock. The onestory, 1,272-square-foot house last sold for $76,000 in 2005, according to Pulaski County assessor’s office records.

Recently, Robert Pickle, who rents the house, said he had never heard of the former owners.

“The only person who used to live here that I know about is some girl who the police keep coming by looking for,” Pickle said.

Bob Pointer, the family services director and CEO of Roselawn Memorial Park, said he had no idea that a Romney was among the roughly 22,000 people buried in the cemetery, which was founded in 1919.

U.S. Sens. John McClellan and Joe T. Robinson are buried there. As are other luminaries like Hall of Fame baseball catcher William “Bill” Dickey, World War II Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Seymour Terry and Dillard’s Department Stores founder William Dillard.

Pointer said if enough people showed interest in the gravesite, the cemetery would place an orange flag beside it to help the curious find the marker, newly cleaned amid freshly trimmed grass.

Milton Romney was a World War I veteran. Pointer said the cemetery would update its registry so that volunteers could place an American flag on his grave.

Webb said he would alert the national campaign about the Arkansas connection to Mitt Romney.

“Maybe when he visits Arkansas, we can take him out to the grave,” Webb said. “It shows how small a world we live in. Who would have ever known we have such a connection to Romney buried right here in Little Rock, Arkansas ?”