'This flag represents the greatest nation in the history of the earth': Romney unveils Stars and Stripes that miraculously survived Challenger space shuttle disaster as he urges America to vote for 'love of country'

Introduced rally of 17,000 in Englewood, Colorado, to Major William Tolbert who arranged for an American flag to fly aboard the doomed space shuttle Challenger in 1986

In an emotional moment that celebrated American ingenuity and spirit in the face of adversity, Mitt Romney last night introduced one of the characters of his campaign for the first time.

For the past year, the Republican candidate has spoken of a Boy Scout leader from Monument, Colorado who together with his troop of young scouts sent up a tasseled American flag on-board the doomed Challenger shuttle in January 1986.

Incredibly months later the scoutmaster Major William Tolbert and the boys were reunited with the flag which had survived the explosion in perfect condition and tonight Mitt Romney introduced Tolbert to a rally in Englewood, electrifying the 17,000 present.

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US Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney looks at scoutmaster Bill Tolbert, holding a U.S. flag which Romney has described as having been recovered from the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger

Having told the story many times over the past year or so of campaigning, the introduction tonight of Tolbert by Romney has been seen by some as the highlight of Romney's run for president.

Romney's tale dates from 15-years ago when he was a Boy Scout leader in the Boy scouts of America and attended a dinner at which the flag had place of honour.

Major Tolbert was there to give a speech and told how he and his troop owned a flag that would fly not only above the Capitol in Washington but into space with the greatest symbol of American technological greatness - the Space Shuttle.

However tuning into television on January 28th, 1986, the scouts were stunned to see Challenger blow-up 73 seconds after take-off, killing all the crew.

U.S. Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is shown an American flag that the boy scouts had sent up in the space shuttle Challenger in Englewood, Colorado today

Emotional: Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is joined onstage by scoutmaster Bill Tolbert at a campaign rally in Englewood, Colorado this evening

The flag was discovered in the wreckage from Florida, still sealed in plastic and without a scratch.

Returned to the scouts in Colorado, Romney's story culminates in him telling the crowd how to touch it made him feel that electricity was running through his arms.

Re-hashing the anecdote again tonight, the candidate's surprise was to suddenly introduce Major Tolbert to a rapturous crowd.

'I haven’t seen that flag in, I don’t know, 15 or 20 years, or that scoutmaster, but Monument, Colorado, is not that far from here,' said Romney.

'Would you please welcome that scoutmaster from Monument, Colorado, and that flag!'

Walking on stage with the American flag folded in a glass box, Tolbert beamed as he stood next to Romney.

Now, did I get that story right?” Romney asked Tolbert.

'You did, sir,' he replied.

'That’s great,” Romney said. 'That is a great flag representing the greatest nation in the history of the earth.'

Romney's Challenger Speech in Full

'Some years ago I was serving as a Boy Scout leader in the Boy Scouts of America and I was at a court of honor, that’s where the Boy Scouts get the Eagle Scout Award or other awards, and there was a long Formica table at the front of the room, and I was seated at the far end of it next to an American flag. And the person who was speaking at the podium was a scoutmaster we’d flown in to tell his story, a scoutmaster from Monument, Colorado, that I just drove through. '



'And he said that his Boy Scout troop wanted to have a very special American flag, so they bought one and they had it flown above the Capitol building. Then, when it came home, the boys said, ‘I’d like to have NASA take it up a space shuttle.’ And so they contacted NASA, and NASA agreed. He said, you can imagine the pride of our boys as they were sitting in their rooms at school watching the TV sets as thy saw the space Challenger shuttle launch into the air, and then they saw it explode on the TV screen in front of their eyes.'



'And he said he called NASA a couple of weeks later and, ‘Have you found any remnant of our flag?’ And they had not. So he called every week, week after week, month after month, still no remnant of the flag from that terrible disaster. Then, he said he was reading an article in the paper, and it described some of the debris from the Challenger disaster and it mentioned a flag. So he called NASA again and they said, ‘In fact, we have a presentation to make to your boys.’ So NASA came together and the boys were there, and he said they presented the boys with this plastic container and they open it up and inside was the American flag, their flag, in perfect condition.'

A thick cloud of engine exhaust, solid rocket booster plume, and expanding gas fill the sky above the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986

The introduction of the Challenger flag into the presidential race came on the day that the two candidates sparred over their vision for the nation.



Romney sprinted through a New Hampshire-to-Iowa-to-Colorado day faulting Obama for telling supporters a day earlier that voting would be their 'best revenge.'

'Vote for 'revenge?'' the GOP candidate asked in New Hampshire, oozing incredulity. 'Let me tell you what I'd like to tell you: Vote for love of country. It is time we lead America to a better place.'

The Republican nominee sounded the same message in Iowa and released a TV ad carrying the same message.

Obama, campaigning in the uber-battleground of Ohio, countered with a final reminder that Tuesday's election is 'not just a choice between two candidates or two parties, it's a choice between two different visions for America.'



Final sprint: President Barack Obama, center, is embraced by a supporter after speaking at a campaign event at Mentor Hight School, in Ohio yesterday

Fired up: Obama is campaigning around the clock in the run up to Tuesday's vote

The president offered himself as the candidate voters can trust, renewing his criticism of Romney for what he said were misleading ads suggesting that automakers were shifting U.S. jobs to China.

'You want to know that your president means what he says and says what he means,' Obama told a 4,000-person crowd in northeast Ohio. 'And after four years as president, you know me.'

The president urged voters in an overflow room to shepherd their friends, neighbors and girlfriends to the polls to vote early, tacking on this very practical caveat: 'You should convince them to vote for me before you drag them off to the polls.'

Campaign spokesman Jennifer Psaki said the president's revenge comment was nothing more than a reminder that if voters think Romney's policies are 'a bad deal for the middle class, then you have power, you can go to the voting booth and cast your ballot.'

President Barack Obama addresses supporters at Mentor High School in Mentor, Ohio, Confident mood: Many polls show Obama ahead in the key swing state

Whatever their motivation, 27 million Americans already have cast ballots around the country.

On the last day of early voting in Florida, voters at some sites in Miami-Dade and Broward counties were waiting up to four hours to cast ballots. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., asked his state's Republican governor to extend early voting at least through Sunday, citing 'an untold number of voters being turned away or becoming too discouraged to vote.'

Vice President Joe Biden spoke for all sides when he told a crowd in Arvada, Colo.: 'Man, I'm so ready to win this election.'

Before leaving Washington, Obama tended to presidential business as he led a briefing at the government's disaster relief agency on the federal response to Superstorm Sandy.



He said the recovery effort still has a long way to go but pledged a '120 percent effort' by all those involved.

Finishing straight: US Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney holds a rally at Dubuque regional airport in Dubuque, Iowa yesterday



'There's nothing more important than us getting this right,' Obama said, keenly aware that a spot-on government response to the storm also was important to his political prospects. Then he began his own three-state campaign day.

After holding mostly small and midsize rallies for much of the campaign, Obama's team is holding a series of larger events this weekend aimed at drawing big crowds in battleground states.



Still, the campaign isn't expecting to draw the massive audiences Obama had in the closing days of the 2008 race, when his rallies drew more than 50,000.

In a whiff of 2008 nostalgia, some of Obama's traveling companions from his campaign four years ago joined him on the road for the final days of his last campaign.



Among them are Robert Gibbs, who served as Obama's first White House press secretary, and Reggie Love, Obama's former personal aide who left the White House earlier this year.

Likewise, virtually Romney's entire senior team left the campaign's Boston headquarters to travel with Romney for the contest's final three days.



Romney waves to the crowd in Ohio as he tells Ohio how important it is to him to win their vote last night

Support me: Mitt Romney delivered an emphatic speech in Ohio as he attempted to gain supporters

Their presence for the campaign's waning hours is an admission that the strategy and planning is largely complete. His schedule has been set, the ads have been placed and Romney's message has been decided.

The tight inner circle that has worked with him for several years in most cases plan to enjoy the final moments on the campaign trail at Romney's side.

'It's been a long road,' Ann Romney told reporters aboard the campaign plane, offering breakfast pastries to Secret Service agents and reporters alike.



After campaigning on her own for the past month, she joined her husband for the final swing.

After his Saturday morning rally on the New Hampshire seacoast, Romney targeted Iowa and then Colorado. He shifted an original plan to campaign in Nevada on Sunday in favor of a schedule likely to bring him back to Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Obama's Saturday itinerary had him heading from Ohio to Milwaukee and Dubuque, Iowa, and ending the day in Bristow, Va. On Sunday, he was taking his campaign to New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado and Ohio.

Mitt Romney and his wife Ann arrive to a cheering crowd as the presidential hopeful gives a speech telling people words are not enough Teamwork: Romney was joined by his wife Ann, Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, and his wife Janna Family man: Romney was seen carrying one of his grandsons as he stepped off his campaign plane at Pease International Airport in Portsmouth

GOP running mate Paul Ryan was in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where he, too, took issue with Obama's 'revenge' comment.

'We don't believe in revenge; we believe in change and hope,' he said in Ohio. 'We actually do.'

Biden, in Colorado, worked in a new dig at Romney tied to this weekend's shift back to standard time: 'It's Mitt Romney's favorite time of year, because he gets to turn the clock back. He wants to turn that clock back so desperately. This time he can really do it.'

Polling shows the race remains a tossup heading into the final days. But Romney still has the tougher path; he must win more of the nine most-contested states to reach 270 electoral votes: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire.

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a campaign rally at Washington Park 2012 in Dubuque, Iowa last night

Romney has added Pennsylvania to the mix, hoping to end a streak of five presidential contests where the Democratic candidate prevailed in the state.



Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 10 percentage points in 2008; the latest polls in the state give him a 4- to 5-point margin.

After months of attack ads, the Obama and Romney campaigns both closed out their campaigns with some upbeat new messages while their allied independent groups continued on a largely negative note.

Obama's campaign was airing a 1-minute ad, 'Determination,' in all the major battleground states. Obama ticks through his plans to boost manufacturing, invest in education and job training, and bring down the deficit in part by asking wealthy people to 'pay a little bit more.'

Romney's campaign was running an ad across the battleground states titled 'Clear Path,' which pulled clips from the third presidential debate where Romney laid out how his presidency would differ from Obama's.