• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Before long, her doctor confined Susie Jr. to bed rest for a tedious six months. She lay in a tiny bedroom watching a small black-and-white television set. An appalled Kay Graham brought over meals prepared by her chef and sat at Susie’s bedside, then shamed Buffett into buying his daughter a larger color TV. When Big Susie caught wind of what was happening, she dropped everything and flew in to care for her daughter, spending months in Washington. As soon as she saw the condition of the place, she turned it upside down and renovated it. “It’s just terrible that Warren won’t pay for this,” she complained. But everything she was spending had been dunned out of him. Their endless money game enhanced Warren’s reputation for thriftiness, and Susie’s reputation for generosity. Since they had both signed up for this arrangement, obviously they both wanted it this way.

With the birth of Emily in September 1986, the Buffetts now had eight grandchildren and stepgrandchildren in three cities: San Francisco, Omaha, and Washington, D.C. As the Emerald Bay house renovation reached habitability, Susie slowed the pace to a steady tinkering and began to use it as a base to entertain friends and, especially, her grandchildren. In San Francisco, she hop-scotched into an apartment in Pacific Heights, close to Peter’s new home on Scott Street. This large condominium on Broadway sat at the top of four dizzying flights of stairs and had a glorious view over the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz.

Now she hired her decorator, Kathleen Cole, as a personal assistant to help manage her life. “You can just work part-time,” she told Cole, “and you’ll have all this time for your two kids.” The next thing Cole knew, she was working for the Buffett Foundation, planning Susie’s travel arrangements, overseeing entertainment, and hiring and managing a staff that included housekeepers, errand-runners, and friends employed partly as a favor. The gift-giving grew every year: Cole ordered catalogs, chose gifts, wrapped them, shipped them, kept track of what was coming in and going out, and maintained records so that nothing was ever duplicated.31 She found herself managing two houses, including the ongoing renovation of the Laguna house and the two-year renovation project that Susie had launched on her new place on Broadway. Cole’s husband, Jim, a fire-fighter, stepped in as a favor to work as Susie’s part-time handyman. Another friend, Ron Parks, a CPA whom Susie had met while traveling in Europe, managed the disbursements and taxes—out of kindness and without pay—for what he jokingly called “STB Enterprises,” or, as another friend put it, Susie’s “payroll and give-away roll.”32 Parks was the partner of Tom Newman, her friend Rackie’s son; Susie had become close friends with the couple. Newman, a chef, occasionally helped out with her parties, but mostly tried unsuccessfully to improve her nutritional style. By now, Susie’s paid and unpaid staff had far outgrown that at Berkshire Hathaway headquarters.

While the renovation of Susie’s new Broadway apartment was under way, Billy Rogers, apparently drug-free, moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and started collaborating with Susie on an album. One day when he was working on music at Peter’s studio, he borrowed twenty dollars from Peter and left around lunchtime. After a couple of days with no word from Rogers, Susie, Peter, and Mary Buffett decided to go to his rooming house and check on him. They found his door locked from inside. When he didn’t answer their knock, they were worried enough to go to the manager to ask her to let them in. As they waited in the hallway for her to return with the key, they could hear drifts of music from other apartments. “Oh, say that you’ll be true, and never leave me blue, Suzie Q,” came from one doorway. From another, “Que sera, sera,” floated through the air. Whatever will be, will be.

Finally the manager arrived and unlocked the door. The three of them stepped in to see Billy sitting