Image 9

Warren and Bertie in front of the family's Buick, around 1938.

Image 10

A revealing family portrait, around 1937.

Image 11

Warren, age six, holds his favorite toy, a nickel-plated money-changer, in a photograph with his sisters from the winter of 1936-1937. He and Doris later recalled the unhappiness their faces expressed.

Image 12

The eighth-grade class at Rosehill School, May 1938, showing the girls and boys of the disastrous "triple date" and Warren's other crush, Clo-Ann Kaul.

Image 13

Fred and Ernest Buffett in front of the Buffett & Son grocery store.

Image 14

Bertie, Leila, and Warren sing to Doris's accompaniment in Washington around 1945.

Image 15

A 1948 campaign flyer for the only election Howard ever lost.

Image 16

Howard Buffett, Congressman.

Image 17

Warren (second left) and his father (fourth left) on a fishing trip with the Nebraska congressional delegation around 1945. The Buffetts look as though they'd rather be elsewhere.

Image 18

As a preteen, Warren's first love was Daisy Mae Scragg. She always loved Li'l Abner, no matter how he treated her.

Image 19

Warren takes the contrarian view in a January 1946 debate about Congress's problems; this aired on the Washington radio station WTOP's "American School of the Air."

Image 20

Warren in the late 1940s, playing the uke in his classic battered tennis shoes and saggy socks.

Image 21

The Buffetts in the summer of 1950. "Doris and Bertie were knockouts," says Warren, who felt socially maladjusted.

Image 22

Warren's pledge photo for Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity at the University of Pennsylvania, January 1948. Howard Buffett was also an Alpha Sig.

Image 23

Warren, Norma Thurston, and Don Danly pose next to the Springfield Rolls-Royce Brewster Coupe. Don and Warren bought it as a stunt in 1948.

Now that Susie accompanied him on some of these trips, however, at her behest he had upgraded from hosteling with his deceased college friend's mother to taking a room at the Plaza Hotel. Not only was the Plaza more convenient for business, but from Susie's perspective, it put department stores like Bergdorf Goodman, Best & Company, and Henri Bendel close at hand. Then a rumor circulated among Buffett's friends-the kinds of rumors that always swirled around Buffett, like the one that had him stashing his daughter in a dresser drawer rather than buying her a crib-a rumor that he had found the Plaza's cheapest room, a tiny windowless cubicle like his old maid's room at Columbia, and cut a deal to stay there at a beggarly price whenever he came alone to New York.35 Regardless of the rumor's truth, each time he checked in to the Plaza he doubtless felt a pang of regret, for he no longer stayed in New York scot-free.

The trips to Bergdorf's were another aspect of how much the New York routine had changed. Susie spent her days going to lunch and shopping; in the evenings they went to dinner, then Broadway or cabaret shows. He liked to see her enjoy herself, and she had become used to shopping at the better stores. Nevertheless, while she now had the power to loosen the purse strings, their game was to tussle over how much money she got to spend. Her way of justifying spending was to do it on someone else's behalf. Susie Jr. was often a beneficiary; her closets filled with clothes from Bergdorf's. One time Susie came back from New York with an ermine jacket. They had met a friend of Warren's who took them to a furrier. "I felt like I had to buy something," she said. "They were being so nice to me." She had done it for the furrier's sake.

Now, all this protecting Berkshire from coattailing would be for naught unless Buffett figured out how to run it well enough to keep Susie in ermine jackets. He made another visit to New Bedford, going by the mill to see Jack Stanton, the heir apparent. Somebody was going to have to run the place once it was wrested from Seabury's hands, and Warren needed to know who that would be.

But Stanton claimed to be very busy, and sent Ken Chace to escort Buffett around the mill.*22 Stanton had no idea that his uncle had already suggested Chace as a possible replacement for Seabury.

Ken Chace was a chemical engineer by training, forty-seven, quiet, controlled, and sincere. He did not know that he was a contender to run the company; nonetheless, he spent two days teaching Buffett the textile business while Buffett asked question after question and Chace explained the mills' problems. Buffett was impressed by his candor and equally impressed by his attitude. Chace made it clear that he thought the Stantons foolish for pouring money into a business that was on its way down the drain.36 When the tour was over, Buffett told Chace he would "be in touch."37 A month or so later, Stanley Rubin had to be called into service to persuade Chace not to take a job at a competing textile mill. Meanwhile, Buffett was scrambling to buy more stock, including shares that belonged to various members of the Chace family.

Buffett's final target was Otis Stanton, who wanted his brother to retire. He had no confidence in Seabury's son, Jack, and doubted Seabury would ever let go of the reins.

Otis and his wife, Mary, agreed to meet Buffett at the Wamsutta Club in New Bedford.38 Over lunch at the graceful Italianate mansion, a relic of New Bedford's onetime grandeur, Otis acknowledged that he would sell, on the condition that Buffett make an equivalent offer to Seabury. Warren agreed. Then Mary Stanton asked if they could keep just a couple of shares out of the two thousand they were selling, out of family sentiment. Just a couple of shares.

Buffett said no. It was all or nothing.39 Otis Stanton's two thousand shares pushed Warren's ownership to forty-nine percent of Berkshire Hathaway-enough to give him effective control. With the prize within his grasp, he met Ken Chace one April afternoon in New York and walked him out to the teeming plaza at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, where he sprang for two bars of ice cream on a stick. Within a bite or two he got to the point, saying, "Ken, I'd like to have you become president of Berkshire Hathaway. How do you feel about that?" Now that he controlled the company, he said, he could change the management at the next directors' meeting.40 Chace, who was stunned to be selected despite the hints Rubin had given him when he convinced him not to take another job, agreed to keep quiet until the board meeting.

Not realizing that his fate had been decided, Jack Stanton and his wife raced down from New Bedford to meet Warren and Susie at the Plaza Hotel for breakfast. Kitty Stanton, more aggressive than her husband, pled Jack's case. Reaching for an argument that would appeal to the Buffetts, Kitty threw in what she must have thought was the clincher. Buffett surely would not overturn New England's hereditary mill aristocracy, who had overseen the business for generations, to put a mill rat like Ken Chace in charge. She and Jack fit in at the Wamsutta Club. Kitty, after all, was a Junior Leaguer, like Susie.41 "She was a nice enough person. But I also got the impression that she felt Jack was entitled to it because of his dad. Part of her appeal was that Ken Chace really wasn't in the same class as Jack Stanton and she and Susie and I were."

Poor Kitty, making this pitch to a man who so disdained hierarchy that he had refused to join Ak-Sar-Ben and thumbed his nose at the establishment of Omaha.