The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [99]
As the wedding date, April 19, 1952, approached, the question arose whether the ceremony would take place at all. The week before, the Missouri River flooded upstream of Omaha. With the waters heading south, officials predicted they would crest above the riverbank and flood the city during the weekend. This made it likely that the National Guard would be called out.
“The whole town turned out with sandbags. I had all these buddies coming in for the wedding—Fred Stanback was going to be best man, and various ushers and guests. They were all kidding me because I was in the National Guard. They said, ‘Well, don’t worry about it, because we’ll substitute for you on the honeymoon.’ Jokes like that. This was going on all week.”
A few days beforehand, Howard drove Warren and Fred down to the river. Thousands of volunteers were building double walls of sandbags, six feet high and four feet deep. The earth sank under the wheels of the huge trucks hauling sand and dirt, as if they were driving over rubber.16 Warren held his breath, hoping that he would not be called for duty to sandbag and that the temporary levee would hold.
“Saturday came, and we were getting married about three in the afternoon. Around noon, the phone rang. My mother said, ‘It’s for you.’ I picked up the phone. The guy at the other end said, ‘C-C-C-Corporal Buffett?’ I had a commanding officer who had a really distinctive stutter. ‘This is C-C-C-Captain Murphy,’ he said.
“If he hadn’t stuttered, I’d have said something that’d probably have gotten me court-martialed, because I would have thought it was the guys pulling a trick on me. But as it was, he said, ‘We’ve been activated. What time c-c-c-can you show up at the Armory?’” Warren almost had a heart attack.17 “And I said, ‘Well, I’m getting married at three o’clock.’ I said, ‘I could probably be there by five.’ He said, ‘Report for d-d-d-duty. We’re going to be p-p-p-patrolling East Omaha d-d-down by the river.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’
“I got off the phone totally depressed. Then I get a call an hour later. And this guy had a perfectly normal voice. He says, ‘Corporal Buffett?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He said, ‘This is General Wood.’18 That was the commanding general of the Thirty-fourth Division, who lived way out in west Nebraska. General Wood said, ‘I’m countermanding Captain Murphy’s order. Have a good time.’”
He had two hours left before the biggest event of his life. Warren showed up at the soaring Gothic sanctuary of Dundee Presbyterian Church well before three o’clock. The wedding of a Congressman’s son and Doc Thompson’s daughter was a major event in Omaha. Several hundred guests, including many of Omaha’s top-drawer people, were expected.19
“Doc Thompson was so proud, he was popping buttons all over the place. I was so nervous that I just figured—well, I didn’t wear my glasses so that I wouldn’t be able to see all those people out there.” Warren also asked the normally reserved Stanback to distract him by talking so he wouldn’t have to focus on what was happening.20
Bertie stood up for Susie as maid of honor, Susie’s sister Dottie as matron of honor. After the photographs, the guests drank nonalcoholic punch and ate wedding cake downstairs in the linoleum-floored church basement. That was the normal thing to do; the Thompsons and the Buffetts weren’t club people. Susie smiled wide as an ivory fan. Warren glowed, incandescent, and wrapped his arm around her waist as if trying to keep them both from sailing off into the air. After more photographs, they changed into their going-away clothes and ran through the crowd of cheering guests to duck into Alice Buffett’s car, which she had lent them for the honeymoon. Warren had already loaded the backseat with Moody’s Manuals and ledgers. All of a sudden, Susie saw the writing on the wall.21 And from Omaha, the newlyweds