The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [275]
To many of the Buffetts’ friends, the explanation that Susie needed to live in San Francisco because it offered her a richer palette that she couldn’t find in Omaha conveyed a vague impression of time spent visiting art galleries, jazz clubs, and the symphony. But by the late 1970s, San Francisco was not the Paris of America. A wave of returning war veterans had washed up on the Bay Area’s shores, many of them injured physically, mentally, and spiritually. The worst-scarred relics fell to the pavement with the winos and the burned-out addicts left from the days of the skinny-dipping hippies who had blown their minds on LSD and pot in the Haight. Those still drawn to San Francisco for its hedonism, sexual freedom, and liberation stepped through a growing puddle of homeless on the streets. The gays had burst from the closet earlier in the decade, in a celebration of freedom that peaked at the Gay Pride Parade in Golden Gate Park in 1976. But a Florida singer named Anita Bryant began what became a national campaign of gay-bashing, which culminated in the murder of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by a homophobic city employee in November 1978.14 After the jury accepted the assassin’s insanity defense and returned a verdict of manslaughter, some of the worst rioting in its history rocked San Francisco.
Among the first of Susie’s new friends were a gay couple, one of whom was a former anesthesiologist who had left Omaha after a malpractice incident. She added others—musicians, artists, people she met in stores, at church, while getting her nails done, at the theater, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. She soon had a large circle, many if not most of whom were gay men. The rebel in Susie blossomed in San Francisco’s heady atmosphere, and her new life liberated her. The former hostess of charity luncheons now threw parties that felt like being backstage at a rock concert; she opened up her doors and invited in the carnival. But, true to form, she also took up a cause, once again defying convention. As she worked the soup kitchen lines, she became the accepting mother that many of her gay friends had never had.
The part of her life that Warren still controlled was the money. She had plenty of Berkshire stock, but under the deal they had worked out, she wasn’t to sell a share. She fell in love with a Marc Chagall painting and wanted to buy it for her tiny new apartment. But she told a friend that she couldn’t do it. “It would ruin everything,” she said. Warren was equally clear: “I don’t want you selling Berkshire shares.” He still covered all her expenses. Gladys monitored her spending and paid all her bills.
Similarly, it was Warren whom Susie got to lend her friend Charles Washington $24,900. He was an Omaha activist whom she had championed through thick and thin; he in turn had been one of the protectors who defended her stoutly to Bud Pagel, the reporter who asked “What Makes Susie Sing?” Buffett thought the loan was a terrible idea, and probably wouldn’t have agreed to it were he not now so eager to please his wife. Sure enough, seven months later, Washington missed a couple of payments. Rarely did anything pierce Buffett’s pleasant demeanor, but if he felt someone was trying to cheat him out of money, his eyes would flash pain and rage and revenge all at once. Within seconds, at most, the emotion would subside while he considered a businesslike