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Romney apologizes for 'dumb' high school pranks

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Romney apologizes for 'dumb' high school pranks

By Sue Ogrocki, AP

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney apologized today for an incident in which he allegedly bullied a boy who was believed to be gay.

"I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended ... obviously I apologize," Romney said on Kilmeade & Friends, a radio show.

Romney said he doesn't remember an incident from 1965 described in The Washington Post. The story quotes five of Romney's classmates from Cranbook School in a Detroit suburb as saying he led a group of boys who pinned down John Lauber while Romney himself cut the boy''s "bleached blonde hair that draped over one eye."

Lauber was described in the article as being "teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality."

The Post story comes a day after President Obama said same-sex marriage should be legal, and the topic of gay marriage has taken center stage in the presidential campaign. The Democratic National Committee's rapid response team circulated the story in an e-mail.

Romney told radio host Brian Kilmeade that he wasn't "going to be too concerned" about the article.

"I don't remember that incident and I'll tell you I certainly don't believe that I ... thought the fellow was homosexual," Romney said. "That was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case."

Romney apologizes after bullying incidents in high school revealed

Romney apologizes after bullying incidents in high school revealed

By Robin Abcarian

May 10, 2012, 9:07 a.m.

A Washington Post investigation into Mitt Romney’s years at the Cranbrook School in Michigan, which included a disturbing account of Romney bullying a student who later turned out to be gay, earned an unusual apology from the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Thursday morning.

The incident came to light one day after President Barack Obama said he supports same-sex marriage, and Romney reiterated his opposition.

“Back in high school, I did some dumb things,” Romney said during a radio interview Thursday morning. “And if anyone was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that." The Post said the call with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News Radio, was hastily arranged by the campaign to respond to the potentially damaging story.

The Washington Post story, by Jason Horowitz, detailed a 1965 incident, witnessed by at least five Cranbrook students, in which Romney, reportedly incensed by the dyed blond locks of a fellow student, led what the Post described as a “posse” of students in a charge against the boy, threw him to the ground and hacked off his hair. “He can’t look like that,” Romney told a close friend at the time. “That’s wrong. Just look at him!”

No one was punished for the incident, according to a number of witnesses, who the Post tracked down and interviewed.

The Post also detailed incidents in which Romney said “Atta girl,” in class to a closeted gay student, and deliberately held a door closed while an sight-impaired teacher walked into it.

But it is the story involving John Lauber, described as “a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney … walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye” that may cause problems for the former governor. After Romney rounded up some friends, including Matthew Friedmann, who gave his version of the story to the Post, “they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.”

Lauber, who died in 2004, was traumatized by the incident, according to a witness who bumped into him years later at a bar in Chicago O’Hare International Airport. “It was horrible,” Lauber reportedly told David Seed, a witness to the event, who apologized to Lauber for not helping stop it, the Post said.

“I’m a very different person than I was in high school, of course, but I’m glad I learned as much as I did during those high school years,” Romney told Fox News Radio on Thursday. “I’m quite a different guy now. I’m married, have five sons five daughters-in-law and now 18 grandchildren.

“There’s going to be some that want to talk about high school. Well, if you really think that’s important, be my guest.”

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks

Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents

By Jason Horowitz, Updated: Thursday, May 10, 9:07 AM

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Romney is now the presumed Republican presidential nominee. In a radio interview Thursday morning, Romney said he didn’t remember the incident but apologized for pranks he helped orchestrate that he said “might have gone too far.”

His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said in a statement that “anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body. The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”

After the incident, Lauber seemed to disappear. He returned days later with his shortened hair back to its natural brown. He finished the year, but ultimately left the school before graduation — thrown out for smoking a cigarette.

Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.

Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”

Lauber died in 2004, according to his three sisters.

Romney came of age during his six years at Cranbrook. First as a day student and later as a full-time boarder, he embraced and became emblematic of the Cranbrook way — a strict disciplinary code and academic rigor that governed the school by day and a free-wheeling unofficial boys code of “Crannies” at night. Wherever the action was, so was Romney. He wrote the most letters to the girls at the sister school across the lake and successfully petitioned to get placed in the top classes. He was not a natural athlete, but found his place among the jocks by managing the hockey team and leading megaphone cheers for the football team. Although a devout Mormon, one of the few at the school, he was less defined by his faith than at any other time in his life. He was a member of 11 school organizations, including the Spectator’s Club and the homecoming committee, and started the school’s booster outfit, the Blue Key Club.

It was at Cranbrook where he first lived on his own, found his future wife and made his own decisions. One can see the institution’s influence on his demeanor and actions during those years, but also how it helped form the clubbiness and earnestness, the sense of leadership and enthusiasm, apparent in his careers as a businessman and a politician. “He strongly bought in to community service,” said Richard Moon, a schoolmate at the time. “That hard work was its own reward.” What is less visible today is what was most apparent to his prep-school peers: his jocularity.

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Mitt Romney - I don't remember beating up that gay guy and cutting off his hair - Honest!!!!

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