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Munger listened to Buffett’s investing and money-raising exploits on their almost-daily phone calls, wondering at the natural salesmanship that enabled Buffett to promote himself so well. His trips to New York became more frequent now that Henry Brandt prospected for him. Cash poured into the partnerships’ coffers, 1960 a watershed year. Warren’s aunt Katie and uncle Fred put nearly $8,000 into Buffett Associates early in the year. Another $51,000 came into Underwood, partly through Chuck Peterson’s connections. Then, “Chuck said to me, ‘I’d like you and Susie to come to dinner and meet the Angles.’ Well, I didn’t know them. He said they’re both doctors, and real smart people.”

Carol and Bill Angle lived across the street from Peterson. Bill Angle, a cardiologist, was a whimsical man who would stay up all night in the winter, spraying water around his front yard and making impeccably glazed snowmen, frosty replicas of his chubby self, standing next to frozen “ponds.” His wife specialized in pediatric research.

“We picked them up and there were six of us in the car. We headed over to the Omaha Country Club. Carol Angle was a very good-looking woman, and smart. All during dinner, she couldn’t take her eyes off me. I mean, she was just fascinated. I was going crazy, talking about everything in the world and trying desperately to impress her. And she was just taking in every word.”

After the presentation, which Peterson recalls as typically persuasive, “we left the country club and drove back. All the way in the car she still couldn’t take her eyes off me. We dropped the Angles off. And I said to Chuck, ‘I made quite an impression tonight.’ He said, ‘No, dummy. She’s deaf. She’s reading your lips.’ Since I couldn’t stop talking, she couldn’t stop looking at me.”25

But he certainly had made an impression, for afterward the Angles hosted a dinner at the Hilltop House for a dozen doctors they knew, at which Bill Angle suggested that they form a partnership and each chip in $10,000. One doctor asked, “What happens if we lose all our money?” “Bill Angle gave him this disgusted look. And he said, ‘Well, then we form another partnership.’”

The Emdee partnership, Buffett’s eighth, was launched on August 15, 1960, with $110,000. The twelfth doctor, the one who worried about losing all his money, did not join.

There were other skeptics. Not everyone in Omaha liked what they heard about Warren Buffett. His secretiveness put people off. Some thought the young hotshot wouldn’t amount to anything, and believed the authority he radiated was unearned arrogance. Some resisted the idea of a nobody succeeding without kowtowing his way to the top. One member of a prominent Omaha family was lunching with half a dozen people at the Blackstone Hotel when Buffett’s name came up. “He’ll be broke in a year,” the man said. “Just give him a year and he’s gone.”26 A partner at Kirkpatrick Pettis, which Howard’s firm had merged with in 1957, said time after time, “The jury’s still out on him.”27

That fall, the already frothy stock market took off on a tear. The economy had been slogging along in a mild recession, and the country’s mood was dark because the Soviets seemed to be winning the arms and space races. But when John F. Kennedy won the presidency in a squeaker of an election, the pending change in administrations to a man from a vigorous young generation uplifted the nation. In one of his early speeches, Kennedy set out a goal: sending a man to the moon and back. The market shot up, and once again comparisons were made to 1929. Warren had never ridden out a speculative market, yet he remained unruffled. It was as if he had been waiting for this moment. Instead of pulling back, as Graham might have done, he did something remarkable. He went into overdrive raising money for the partnerships.

He put Bertie and her husband, his uncle George from Albuquerque, and his cousin Bill into Buffett Associates, the original partnership. Wayne