The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [548]
11. The announcement of the sale of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the area’s AM and FM radio stations to Cap Cities for $80 million was on January 6, 1973. However, the closing of the deal was delayed until November 1974.
12. “I should have done it,” Buffett says. “That was really dumb. We would have made a lot of money with that.”
13. According to Boys Town (now renamed Girls and Boys Town), the home opened on December 12, 1917, with about six boys and grew to twenty-five within three weeks. The approximate date and number (“between twenty and thirty”) are cited in Omaha’s Own Magazine and Trade Review, December 1928.
14. Howard Buffett “helped us greatly in securing our own post office for which we were deeply grateful, because he came to us to assist us when we were badly in need of a friend.” Patrick J. Norton letter to Warren Buffett, April 24, 1972. The post office was established in 1934 and the village became incorporated in 1936, according to the Irish Independent, August 25, 1971. The post office was a key element in the charm of Boys Town’s fund-raising appeals.
15. The average contribution at the time of the Sun’s story was $1.62. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.
16. Ibid. Robert Dorr, “Hard-Core Delinquent Rarity at Boys Town,” Omaha World-Herald, April 16, 1972.
17. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978. Williams was the editor during the Boys Town investigation.
18. Michael Casey, new director of special projects brought in after the Sun story, described the atmosphere as a “minimum-security prison,” based on his experience working in prisons and mental hospitals, in “Midlands News” of the Omaha World-Herald, March 10, 1974. According to Casey’s account, he was forced to resign from Boys Town six months later and stated that reforms were window dressing. Father Hupp says Casey left because his job was done—but Casey was an outspoken ex-convict, which may have made him “too hot.”
19. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 1975.
20. The Sun had a “four-way” staff that reported stories that would appear in seven editions of the paper. These were the reporters working on the Boys Town story.
21. According to Paul Williams, in Investigative Reporting and Editing, Boys Town got school-aid funds and state welfare and gasoline tax funds. While these were “relatively small change” in the context of the overall budget, about $200,000 a year, the discrepancy was real and pointed to other possible problems.
22. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner. Wegner speaks of “this gal down there in the Lincoln welfare department [who] tried to make a big thing, a big blow out of this…” which, he thought, was personal rather than institutional. Nevertheless, he implied that Boys Town might move out of state if the regulators pestered it too much because “our bylaws say WE’RE NOT OBLIGED TO STAY HERE.”
23. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing.
24. Interview with Mick Rood. According to several sources, the “Deep Throat” of Boys Town, a role that required courage in insular Omaha, was Dr. Claude Organ.
25. Jeannie Lipsey Rosenblum described his appearance at that time in an interview.
26. As a religiously affiliated organization, Boys Town was entitled to an exemption for the first two years and could have filed with the archdiocese of Omaha. But it had filed separately anyway.
27. According to Paul Williams, the footwork in Philadelphia was done by Melinda Upp, a Washington reporter whom he previously had tried to hire. Finally, the call came: Are you sure you want this? she asked. The IRS charged a dollar a page and it was 94 pages long. The answer was, Hell, yes.
28. Interview with Randy Brown.
29. In his follow-up columns in the Sun.
30. The $25 million is combined