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All this basking in the limelight meant that Debbie Bosanek and Deb Ray had to guard the phone and the door with dogged vigilance. Once, an overexcited woman who flew from Japan to get his autograph arrived in the office. She was so overcome by Buffett’s presence that she prostrated herself to “worship” him and had a sort of conniption on the floor. The secretaries hustled her out.

She wrote later that her doctor had given her tranquilizers, and she hoped to be allowed in Buffett’s presence again. She sent photographs of herself and wrote letters.

“I like being worshipped,” Buffett said in a plaintive tone. Nevertheless, the secretaries had their way and the woman wasn’t invited back.43

57

Oracle

Omaha • April–August 2003

Buffett seemed to thrive like a trumpet vine as he grew larger than life. Yet he remained brilliant at balancing his priorities. As requests for his time grew, his view that commitments are sacred and his natural inclination to conserve energy saved him from succumbing to the flattery of being in demand. He did only what made sense and what he wanted to do. He never let people waste his time. If he added something to his schedule, he discarded something else. He never rushed. He always had time to work on business deals, and he always had time for the people who mattered to him. His friends could pick up the phone and call him whenever they liked. He managed this by keeping his phone calls warmhearted and short. When he was ready to stop talking, the conversation simply died. The kind of friends he had didn’t abuse the privilege. While he had many fond acquaintances, he added true friends only at intervals of years.

Susie added new “friends” at intervals of days or weeks. Kathleen Cole handled a gift list that had grown to literally a thousand people. Susie called herself a “geriatric gypsy” who lived in the sky. Cole smoothed the way logistically for her to travel for months on end—visiting grandchildren, caring for the sick and dying, vacationing, traveling on foundation business, seeing Warren and the family at scheduled times. Cole packed and unpacked for her, managed her three homes and staff, juggled the NetJets timetable, made the hotel reservations, scheduled the pedicures, fended off the phone calls, and organized the latest treasures from Susie’s shopping trips.

Not only was Susie a woman who couldn’t say no; she was a woman who couldn’t be reached. Susie was such a nomad, she was so helpless to limit her attention to anyone, and the number of people who felt they had claim to her time had grown so astoundingly, that by now even her close friends were allowed to contact her only through Kathleen.

Some who loved her grew concerned, although they rarely saw her to say so. “No one can have three or four hundred genuine friendships,” argued one. She seemed to run faster all the time. “All this chasing, like chasing your tail,” was another friend’s reaction. “You can’t have friends if you’re not around.” But “if you’re ill,” Susie said, “I’ll have plenty of time for you.” Some felt that her compulsion to serve and please had replaced living life in a straight line toward goals of her own. “She never spoke her own truth,” said one. The metaphysically minded found it significant that her health problems arose in the throat and the gut; they associated the constant accumulation of collections and possessions and nonstop redecoration as an expression of what she was holding in. “Her life got heavier and heavier,” one person said. “Stop!” another wanted to tell her. “Get some perspective and nurture yourself.” But “it was as if she couldn’t slow down, because if she did, something would happen.”

Yet many others called her a saint, an angel, and even compared her to Mother Teresa. She gave so much of herself to so many that she struck people as fragile now; the warm woolen cloak she wore against the harshness of the world had grown lacy and thin. But isn’t that the nature of a saint, mused one