By NBC's Morgan Parmet
Gov. Mitt Romney becomes teary eyed when he tells an audience in Charlotte, N.C., talking about how a community came together to help his niece when her husband was called up to the National Guard.
Transcript:
“There are scenes that come to my mind when I think of America and there are scenes of people coming together. Sometimes when there's a crisis; sometimes when there’s just someone in trouble.
“My niece-- my niece and her husband, he's a lawyer, they bought a starter home. Young married couple. Their first daughter is completely deaf, stone deaf. And at about age one or one in a half they installed one of these cochlear implants invented in this country to help her hear a little bit. And then she goes to get special classes to help her learn how to speak. It's a wonderful thing that that's able to be done, but just as this was happening in their lives, just after they bought their home, just a couple months into it, I think. Shortly after they bought it, her husband was called up by the national guard to go off to Iraq and serve he did.
“But she now had to live on a much lower income. National Guard salaries aren't as high as they were in his law firm. Now she's in this home and the outside of her is a whole dirt yard. No grass or anything yet, just stones and dirt. And under the neighborhood association where they have this home, you got a year from the time you buy your home till the landscaping’s supposed to be in.
“Well, she's a little bit concerned cause that time period is coming up. She doesn't have the money to do the landscaping, to pay for it. She's got a little girl that is getting various tutoring classes and speaking therapy. She wonders what's going to happen. She's concerned.
“One morning, she comes outside and there are her neighbors all picking up the rocks out of her yard, raking the dirt. They put in a sprinkler system. They laid down sod. They even build a swing set for her daughter. This is the America that I love.
“This is a great people. We can do anything. We can achieve anything.”