Dear Ann,

You’ve come a long way. It’s been over fifteen years since we sat in the first neurologist’s waiting room, looking at his office brochures that described ALS, Parkinson’s, and Multiple Sclerosis. We could handle anything, I said, as long as it wasn’t terminal. Your right side had been numb for several weeks, and the numbness was spreading. You were struggling to walk up stairs.

After all the tests, the diagnosis was MS. No cure, but treatment might slow its progress. Then came years of Dr. Weiner’s medical care, innumerable reflexology sessions with Fritz Blietschau, hours on horseback, priesthood blessings and prayer. What a miracle it was four years later to see you run the Olympic torch into Salt Lake City.

And today, you inaugurate the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, coordinating research at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital with that of research centers around the globe. You are attacking not only MS, but also Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s and brain tumors.

From one of the wounded, you have become one of the warriors. I could not be more proud of the 15 year old girl I fell in love with almost 50 years ago.

Love,

Mitt