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By Root 3390 0

had managed Howard’s only failed reelection campaign—but in most respects they were as different as could be from Warren’s. Susie’s mother, Dorothy Thompson, a sweet, tiny woman, warm, genuine, and wise to the world, was known in the family as the “wife who went along.” She made sure dinner was on the table at six p.m. sharp and supported the many lives her husband, Dr. William Thompson, led. A smallish, silver-haired peacock of a man who wore bow ties and dressed in three-piece wool suits in lavender or cotton-candy pink or chartreuse, he cut a striking figure and carried himself with the posture of someone who was confident that he was being admired. He came, he said, “from a long line of teachers and preachers,” and seemed to want to replicate all their labors at once.12

As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Omaha, he ran the college while at the same time teaching psychology. As assistant athletic director, he controlled the university athletic programs and directed them with all the gusto of a former football player and sports fanatic. This role made him so prominent that “every cop in town knew him,” says Buffett, “which was a good thing, because of the way he drove.” He also designed IQ tests and psychology tests, and supervised the testing of all the city’s schoolchildren.13 Not content to enjoy a day of rest from bossing people around and testing their children, on Sundays he donned the vestments of an ordained minister and preached v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in a deep, booming voice at the tiny Irvington Christian Church, where his daughters made up the two-person choir.14 The rest of the time, he broadcast his political beliefs, which were similar to Howard Buffett’s, to anyone who came within the sound of his voice.

Doc Thompson expressed his wishes with a jovial smile while insisting that they be obeyed at once. He talked of the importance of women while expecting them to wait on him. His work revolved around the inner self, but he was noticeably vain. He clung to those he loved, growing nervous when they were out of his sight. A chronically anxious hypochondriac, he often predicted that some sort of disaster would befall anyone he cared about. He lavished affection on those who satisfied his demanding ways.

The Thompsons’ older daughter, Dorothy, known as Dottie, was not one of those. According to family lore, during the first few years of Dottie’s life, when her father was especially displeased with her, he locked her in a closet.15 A charitable interpretation would be that the pressure of trying to finish his PhD with a toddler underfoot unhinged him.

Seven years after Dottie’s arrival, their second daughter, Susie, was born. Dorothy Thompson, seeing how badly Dottie was responding to her husband’s harsh child-rearing methods, supposedly asserted herself to tell him “that one was yours, I’m raising the next.”

Susie was sickly from birth. She had allergies and chronic ear infections and endured a dozen ear lancings during her first eighteen months. She suffered through long bouts of rheumatic fever, and her illnesses confined her to the house for four to five months at a time from kindergarten through second grade. She later recalled watching her friends playing outside her window during these periods, while she longed to join them.16

Through her many illnesses, the Thompsons constantly comforted, cuddled, and rocked their daughter. Her father doted on her. “There was nothing in his life remotely approaching her,” says Warren. “Susie could do no wrong, but everything that Dottie did was wrong. They were always critical of her.”

A family home movie shows Susie, about age four, shouting, “No!” and ordering around Dottie, age eleven, as they played with a tea set.17

When at last Susie was well and no longer a prisoner of her bedroom, she never chose to play sports or games outdoors but was always eager to make friends.18 It was people she had missed during those long days of illness.

“When you’ve had pain,” Susie later recalled, “the release from it can be totally freeing. It’s marvelous.