The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [525]
16. In many patients, rheumatic fever causes mild to serious heart complications (in Howard Buffett’s case, at least moderate complications), but based on her subsequent health history, Susan Thompson appears to have been among the 20–60% who escape significant carditis, or long-term damage to the heart.
17. Warren, Doris Buffett, Roberta Buffett Bialek, Susie Buffett Jr., and other Buffetts talk of this striking film.
18. Interview with Raquel “Rackie” Newman.
19. Al Pagel, “Susie Sings for More Than Her Supper,” Omaha World-Herald, April 17, 1977.
20. Interviews with Charlene Moscrey, Sue James Stewart, Marilyn Kaplan Weisberg.
21. According to some high school classmates who asked not to be identified.
22. Interviews with Donna Miller, Inga Swenson. Swenson, who went on to become a professional actress, played Cornelia Otis Skinner opposite Thompson’s Emily Kimbrough.
23. A composite taken from interviews with Inga Swenson, Donna Miller, Roberta Buffett Bialek, and John Smith, whose brother Dick Smith took Susie dancing.
24. Interviews with Sue James Stewart, Marilyn Kaplan Weisberg. Stewart, who was Sue Brownlee in high school, had access to a car and drove her best friend Susie to Council Bluffs for dates with Brown.
25. Interviews with Roberta Buffett Bialek, Warren Buffett, Doris Buffett, Marilyn Kaplan Weisberg.
26. “I don’t think anything as exciting has ever happened to me,” Bertie told the college newspaper. “This is what we sent her to Northwestern for?” wondered Howard.
27. The Wildcat Council acted as guides for campus visitors and leaders during New Student Week. Members joined by petitioning the council for membership (Northwestern University Student Handbook, 1950–1951).
28. Interview with Milton Brown, who says he would have depledged had the roles been reversed.
29. Interview with Sue James Stewart. Susie, a self-described “personal theist,” flirted with Buddhism, a nontheistic religion, all her life and often referred to Zen or to herself as a “Zen person.” It is fair to say she used the terms “Zen” and “theist” loosely.
30. Al Pagel, “Susie Sings…”
31. Interview with Roberta Buffett Bialek.
32. Interviews with Chuck Peterson, Doris Buffett.
33. Interview with Charlie Munger.
34. Interview with Milton Brown. In a minor footnote to the story, this was the only time Brown ever entered the Buffetts’ house.
35. Interview with Sue James Stewart.
36. “I can see her in those dresses now,” Buffett says, a poignant statement from a man who does not know the color of his own bedroom walls.
37. “Debaters Win at Southwest Meet,” Gateway, December 14, 1951.
38. “ASGD Plans Meet for New Members,” Gateway, October 19, 1951.
39. Warren Buffett letter to Dorothy Stahl, October 6, 1951.
40. Susan Thompson Buffett, as conveyed to Warren Buffett.
41. Interview with Milton Brown.
42. The United States airlifted food and supplies into West Berlin during 1948 and 1949 during a Soviet blockade in which the Soviet Union attempted to seize the entire city, which had been partitioned after World War II.
43. Buffett recalls a literal three-hour lecture. A conversation of such length was almost certainly the result of him working himself up to ask the question while Doc Thompson carried on.
Chapter 19
1. The net gain on investments was $7,434. He also put $2,500 into the account that he’d saved from his pay working at Buffett-Falk.
2. Delving a little further into Buffett’s reasoning about the valuation of an insurance business: “The stock was trading around forty dollars and therefore the whole company was selling for about seven million. I figured the company would be worth as much as the premium volume, roughly, because they would get the investment income on ‘float’ that was pretty close to dollar-for-dollar, maybe with the premium income. Plus, they’d have the book value. So I figured it would always be worth at least as much as the premium. Now, all I had to do was get to a billion dollars of premium income and I was going to be a millionaire.