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Sometimes he went down to the YMCA to lift weights among other young men. He and Lou took their hobby seriously, making insider jokes about the “heavy and light” lifting system and “upright rowing motions.” They paid close attention to everything Uncle Bob wrote. Hoffman knew how to adapt to the tenor of the times. Everyone knew about the vicious Jap soldier’s ability to withstand pain and suffering, so he wrote that the point of lifting weights was to fight the Japanese. He illustrated this with a photo of a vicious Jap soldier, arched in a backbend from his toes to the crown of his head, lifting a huge set of cement barbells over his chest, training to beat the Allies. Warren was not lifting weights to fight the Japanese, or, for that matter, to fight anybody. Everything that Uncle Bob wrote, however, inspired him in his competition with himself.

But while Warren was clanking down in the basement, the Republicans were in hell. Franklin Roosevelt had managed to win a fourth term as President, ensuring the Democrats another four years in the White House. At the dinner table, the family listened to much ranting from Howard. Then, on April 12, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and his Vice President, Harry Truman, succeeded him as President.

Roosevelt’s death sent most of the country into deep mourning, tinged with fear. Three and a half years into the war, the country had lost the man who made it feel secure, and it had low expectations of Truman. He retained FDR’s cabinet and sounded so humble that some thought he might be overwhelmed by the job. But to the Buffetts, no one could be worse than FDR. The family down the street whose father worked for the Canadian Embassy came to call on their Congressman neighbor upon the President’s death and pay their condolences. But when they arrived, Doris says, “Yo, ho, ho, we were celebrating.”8

And to Warren, the death of a President meant another way to make money. Newspapers put out special editions, and he hustled himself out to the street corner, hawking papers while everybody mourned.

One month later, on May 8, 1945, came V-E Day, the formal end of the war in Europe, following Germany’s unconditional surrender. Again there were special editions to sell, and Warren echoed his father’s political convictions as a matter of course. But at the time, he was only passingly interested in these adult concerns, because his real obsession was weight lifting and Bob Hoffman. He spent most of his free time down in the basement. A few weeks later, when school was out, he could wait no longer. He had to meet his idol, Uncle Bob. “He was it. I had to see him in person.”

With their parents’ amused blessing, Warren and Lou took off for York, Pennsylvania, hitchhhiking part of the way.9

“He had this barbell factory up there in York where they turned this stuff out. It was really more of a foundry. And he had the whole Olympic team working there. John Grimek was the big bodybuilder. Steve Stanko held the world’s record then for the clean and jerk: three hundred eighty-one pounds. But this is before they had super-heavyweight classifications.”

In one sense the visit was demoralizing. “The guys did not bulk up the same way in those days. It blew my mind that here were these guys that were Olympic champions, but a lot of them were small because they were in smaller-weight classes. And if you saw them in a foundry, wearing foundry-type clothes, they just looked like nothing.” But in another sense, the sight of those fairly ordinary-looking men lifted the boys’ aspirations. Maybe success in bodybuilding was within their reach. They saw themselves becoming men, physical specimens who could impress a woman. “Uncle Bob—when he spoke, it was like God was talking to us. And when you looked at yourself in the mirror, you saw deltoids and abs and the latissimus dorsi and everything. You learned every muscle group.”

But the most impressive celebrity in Strength and Health—apart from Uncle Bob himself—was not John Grimek, the greatest bodybuilder in the world.