The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [300]
Louie, who could do no wrong in his mother’s eyes, made no headway with Rose. “She figured she lost control of this place, and she blew her top,” he says.
“He always treated his mother perfectly,” Buffett says. “It was the hardest thing in the world for her to accept that she was giving up control. And she was angry at the world for having to give up the thing that she loved most.”
After two years, Mrs. B’s Warehouse, while still small, was growing at such a rate that pound for pound, it was trouncing the Mart. Finally Louie intervened again. “Mother,” he said, “you’ve got to sell this thing back to us. There’s no sense competing one against the other.”69 And so Rose called Buffett. She missed the Mart. She missed her family. She was lonely in her house, separated from her family. “I was wrong,” she said; family meant more than pride and more than business. Mrs. B told Buffett that she wanted to come back. With a box of See’s Candies under his arm and holding a huge bouquet of pink roses, Buffett went out to see her. He offered her $5 million simply for the use of her name and her lease.
He added one catch: This time she must sign a noncompete agreement, a contract designed so that she could never again compete with him. This was something he wished he’d done before. The absurdity of imposing a noncompete agreement on a ninety-nine-year-old woman was far from lost on him. Nevertheless, Buffett was realistic. The agreement was cunningly written to outlast Mrs. B. If she retired, or quit in a rage or for any other reason, no matter how old she was, for five years afterward she could not compete with Buffett and her relatives. Even if she lived to be 120 years old, Buffett was taking no chances. “I thought she might go on forever,” he says. “I needed five years beyond forever with her.”
Mrs. B still could not read or write English. Nevertheless, she signed the noncompete, which had been explained to her, with her characteristic mark. The truce made headlines. “And then I made sure she never got mad,” Buffett says. He set about flattering his new employee unctuously to make her so happy that she would never, ever quit and start the clock running on her noncompete.
On April 7, 1993, the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce put her in the inaugural class of its business hall of fame, alongside Buffett, Peter Kiewit, and several others. Then Buffett, knees trembling slightly, got up on a stage at the Highland Club and sang in public, for the first time in his life, to Mrs. B on her hundredth birthday. He also donated a million dollars to a local theater she was renovating.
Nobody could believe it. Warren Buffett had given away a million dollars.
And through all of the hosannas, none of it ever went to Rose Blumkin’s head. Not even the million dollars that Warren Buffett had given her. She felt she owed everything, all her good fortune, to this country for the opportunities it had given her. At family events, she insisted that her favorite song, “God Bless America,” be played every time, sometimes even more than once.
“I don’t think I deserve it,” she said, over and over, of the accolades.70 But she did.
45
Call the Tow Truck
Omaha • 1982–1989
Once disembarked from the QE II, Susie Buffett listened to her husband’s tales of Mrs. B or whatever his latest fixation might be from a distance, just like everybody else. She and Warren talked nearly every day on a special “hotline” installed in her apartment. When the phone rang, she jumped up instantly. “That’s Warren!” she would say, and run away from whatever conversation she was having with a friend to answer it. He was still her number one obligation. But unless he needed her, her