• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Susie stayed close to Peter through his music, while she continued to toy with the idea of reviving her career, working with a pair of producers, Marvin Laird and Joel Paley. She took them to Omaha and toured them around the Old Market jazz clubs. They felt like they were writing an act for “their favorite English teacher.” Susie displayed no signs of wealth, but since they had heard something about a newspaper and See’s, they thought, “Maybe she’ll pay us in candy.”

At last they settled on an act that Susie would perform at Delmonico’s in New York at a benefit for New York University. The act she wanted them to create would reflect her personality—a bohemian, gypsy soul and a wicked, sly sense of humor. In the end, however, she sang a conventional medley, replacing the soulful, passionate songs of 1977 with standards: “String of Pearls,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Satin Doll,” “Take the A Train,” “Seems Like Old Times.”

At the benefit, Warren beamed as he watched his wife work the audience. Laird and Paley realized that showing off his talented, beautiful wife made Buffett proud and happy. It seemed to them that, unlike most show-business people, Susie’s performance wasn’t about her ego. Performing was a way of connecting with the audience, and giving something to her husband.15

Laird and Paley, who referred to themselves jokingly as “musical gigolos,” became part of Susie’s singing life, meeting Peter and going down to the Laguna house to work with her for the next few years on her music as she considered whether she could make a viable career out of it. They never met Susie Jr., who had moved to Washington, where Katharine Graham took an interest and arranged for her to work as an editorial assistant, first at the New Republic and then at U.S. News & World Report. In November 1983, in a huge wedding at New York’s Metropolitan Club, she married again, this time to Allen Greenberg, a public-interest lawyer for Ralph Nader. Greenberg had her father’s cool analytical bent and looked like someone who lived in a library. Both Susie’s parents took to their new son-in-law immediately, and people remarked on how much Allen resembled Susie’s father—rational, dispassionate, good at saying no. The newlyweds moved into a Washington town house but rented most of it out to other tenants and lived in a tiny apartment. By this time Susie Jr. had sold all her Berkshire stock—when it was trading for less than $1,000 per share.

Howie’s first marriage, like his sister’s, had not lasted. Despondent, he spoke to his father, who had told him a change of geography would do him good and suggested that he work at one of Berkshire’s businesses. Attracted to California, Howie took a job at See’s Candies in Los Angeles. Big Susie sent him to live with Dan Grossman, whom Buffett had installed at one of Berkshire’s little insurers in Los Angeles when it ran into trouble. Howie started mopping floors and doing maintenance and worked his way up to ordering boxes, while getting into adrenaline-charged scrapes of various types. Buffett told him he had to stay at See’s for two years. Howie prepared to wait it out in resignation, but he didn’t last at Grossman’s. He moved into the house at Laguna, where he felt more at home.16

By chance, Howie was partnered in doubles tennis at Emerald Bay with Devon Morse, a sweet, unhappily married blonde with four daughters. To impress her, he shimmied up a post to change the time on a clock by the tennis court, fell off, and broke his foot. She helped him get home, then showed up at the house with some food. They started to talk and he learned she was trying to leave her rich husband. The marriage that had eventually resulted from their relationship followed a series of Howie-type adventures; the couple removed the children from the home of Devon’s husband, a gun collector whose house was filled with hundreds of weapons. In 1982, Howie had convinced Devon that it would be best to relocate to Nebraska, where they were married by a