The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [421]
He took inventory of his problems. The stock was in such disrepute that only his offer to buy it himself had saved it. General Re, his largest deal, seemed cursed. Coca-Cola was nagging at his thoughts. How could so much damage have happened so quickly in a business with such a bulletproof brand? Could it really all be poor old Ivester’s fault? And now a problem with his health had reared up to stare him in the face.
The fact of mortality dwelled beneath the surface of Buffett’s bathtub memory, periodically sliding its way back up into the tub.13 He had still never come to terms with his father’s death. He had never decided on a suitable memorial to Howard. He had moved the large portrait of Howard so that it hung on the wall behind his desk, floating above his own head. Howard’s papers sat in the basement of his house, untouched. Warren could not bring himself to go through them. He teared up if he even thought about it, obviously terrified to let the emotions that had been held back all these thirty-five years erupt.
He’d warned that trees don’t grow to the sky; someday everything must end. Yet he himself couldn’t face the day he would have to draw the line under his career and say: “This is it. I’m done. The Sistine Chapel is finished. No further brushstroke will improve it—any further effort will produce an ordinary result.”
He was sixty-nine years old. He couldn’t believe that he was sixty-nine years old; he still felt like a young man. He comforted himself with the knowledge that decades remained until he reached the age at which his mother had died. General Re would be fixed, and Coca-Cola, as he knew, could be run by a ham sandwich. The kidney stone…Whoosh! The bathtub memory went to work. He returned to preparing for his shareholder meeting, which had become the happiest week of his year.
For several days at the end of April, the town grew more crowded, the airport grew busier than usual, a rivulet, then a stream of people arrived in the hotel lobbies to check in, and tables in the outdoor cafes of restaurants downtown started to fill. The rental car companies ran out of cars. The bar at the Marriott Regency—at the time a sort of unofficial headquarters for meeting “insiders”—was packed. People wearing Berkshire Hathaway meeting credentials strolled through Omaha as if identifying themselves as members of a club. In Buffett’s office, the phone rang with urgent last-minute requests for press credentials, meeting passes, and requests from guests to bring their own guests to the most exclusive event of the year in Omaha—Buffett’s private Sunday brunch. With outward patience but increasing irritation at the more brazen requests, Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, unsnarled the bottleneck and told people no.
On Friday night, Buffett made the rounds from public events to private parties. Some of his disciples, dressed in gigantic yellow foam cowboy-style hats like members of a cult, mingled with longtime shareholders and big-time money managers at the Borsheim’s cocktail party, where much of Omaha joined the out-of-town shareholders to scarf down free drinks and food. Susan Jacques of Borsheim’s staged this event, which Buffett supported because it increased turnover, despite his suspicions that a lot of freeloaders showed up.
Over at the Civic Auditorium, the shareholder meeting itself—which had multiplied to include thousands of staff, vendors, and volunteer employees; acres of exhibits, flowers, and displays; truckloads of turkey sandwiches, hot dogs, and Coke; signage, exhibits, security, media, sound, video, lighting, and private parties for the vendors and helpers—was designed, choreographed, and overseen by just one employee, Kelly Muchemore, whom Buffett called the “Flo Ziegfeld” of Berkshire Hathaway. Kelly did not even have a secretary. Technically, she was a secretary. It would take four people to replace Kelly, Buffett pointed out with pride. One side effect