The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [499]
Buffett also gave a donation to former President Jimmy Carter for the work of the Carter Center. After leaving office an unpopular president, Carter had become an example of someone fallen to the ninety-eighth floor who had looked forward, not back, rising to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in global health, democracy, and human rights. “Would love to have you join us in Ghana on Feb. 6–8, 2007,” Carter wrote him back warmly after the gift, “to see our guinea worm work.”22 Buffett considered Carter a friend, but nobody—not Howie, not Big Susie, not even Bill Gates—could have gotten him on a plane to go see a guinea worm.23
Thus, for a third time he avoided a trip to Africa. Some things did not change. But time moved on, and other things did change.
Astrid was now Warren’s official companion at events outside Omaha. She remained virtually unchanged—the same plainspoken, unpretentious person—but her world had expanded at stunning speed. She now socialized routinely with Bill and Melinda Gates. In the fall of 2005, she and Warren had flown to Tahiti to attend Bill Gates’s fiftieth-birthday party, which took place on Paul Allen’s sleek blue-and-white Octopus, one of the world’s largest yachts. A billionaire’s little-boy fantasy that belonged to the world’s sixth-richest man, the Octopus had a movie theater, a recording studio, two helicopters, a sixty-three-foot tender, and a small submarine that could sleep eight people for two weeks on the ocean floor. She and Warren stayed in Paul Allen’s mother’s stateroom, a large suite with a walk-in closet and a library in the sitting room. “Oh, my God,” says Astrid, “it was unbelievable. I have never experienced and will probably never experience a time like that again.”
“It beats home” was Warren’s reaction. He returned from the trip talking of the onboard bridge games.24
Two years after Susie’s death, on his seventy-sixth birthday, Warren married Astrid in an unfussy civil ceremony at Susie Jr.’s house with no guests other than family. Astrid wore a simple turquoise blouse and white pants, and Warren wore a business suit. Tears welled from her eyes as he placed a huge diamond solitaire ring on her finger. Afterward, they went to the Bonefish Grill next to Borsheim’s for dinner. Then they flew out to San Francisco for a wedding party and a traditional wedding cake at Sharon Osberg and David Smith’s. The Gateses joined them for the celebration.
Warren Buffett, the not-simple man of simple tastes, now had the simple life of the man that he had always believed himself to be. He had one wife, drove one car, occupied one house that hadn’t been redecorated in years, ran one business, and spent more and more time with his family.25
Buffett always said that trees don’t grow to the sky. But new saplings form.
The question of who would succeed him had long vexed his shareholders.
He sometimes quipped that Berkshire could be run by someone working five hours a week, or by Charlie’s bust of Ben Franklin, or by a cardboard cutout. He’d also joked about controlling it after his death: “Well, my backup plan is that I’ve figured out how to manage the company by seance.” No one was fooled by his banter. On other occasions he was just as likely to tell his listeners: “My psyche is all wrapped up in Berkshire.” And those who worked for and invested in Berkshire were all wrapped up in Buffett. He was not replaceable. And what would happen to all that capital? The question of either a dividend or a huge share repurchase would arise instantly when he was gone. His successor would have to change some things—for while parts of the Berkshire model should be preserved, other parts should not. The headquarters staff—famously minuscule—would probably grow as outsourced functions were reclaimed. Meanwhile,