1. Leila Buffett letter to Clyde and Edna Buffett, undated but approximately 1964.
2. United States Department of Agriculture and Nebraska Department of Agriculture, Nebraska Agricultural Statistics (preliminary report) 1930. Lincoln, Government Printing Office, 1930, p. 3.
3. Buffett’s impression of 1940s South Omaha was vivid: “If you walked around down there in those days, believe me, it was not conducive to eating hot dogs.”
4. This description of Washington in wartime owes much to David Brinkley’s Washington Goes to War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).
5. Dr. Frank Reichel headed American Viscose.
6. Interviews with Doris Buffett, Roberta Buffett Bialek, Warren Buffett.
7. Buffett is probably embellishing a little here with hindsight.
8. Interview with Roberta Buffett Bialek.
9. Gladys, formerly known as Gussie, changed her name to Mary sometime during this period. Warren vainly pursued a romance with her daughter Carolyn, who later married Buffett’s friend Walter Scott.
10. Warren claims it was Byron’s idea. Byron claims it was Warren’s idea. Stu says he can’t remember.
11. Joan Fugate Martin, who remembers the date, in an interview corroborated the story. She called the boys perfect gentlemen, but had nothing to add about their self-confessed awkwardness.
12. Interviews with Stu Erickson and Byron Swanson, who supplied various details of the story.
13. The phone number is from a letter from Mrs. Anna Mae Junno, whose grandfather used to work as a meat cutter.
14. The lowly stock boy was Charlie Munger.
15. Interview with Katie Buffett.
16. Ibid. Leila had a striver’s fascination with social hierarchies and upward mobility.
17. “You might argue that it was working in my grandfather’s grocery store that fostered a lot of desire for independence in me,” Buffett says.
18. This letter, which was at one time one of Buffett’s treasured heirlooms, resided in his desk drawer for many years, written on a piece of yellow paper. He can no longer locate it. Through a trade association, Ernest lobbied against chain stores and worked for legislation that would levy special taxes on them—in vain.
19. Interview with Doris Buffett.
20. Warren Buffett letter to Meg Greenfield, June 19, 1984.
21. Sadly, no one in the family can locate a copy of this manuscript today.
22. Spring Valley marketing brochure. The place had its own coat of arms.
23. Alice Deal Junior High School was named after the first junior high principal in Washington, D.C.
24. Buffett is reasonably sure Ms. Allwine was his English teacher and that “she had good reason” for her low opinion of him. “I deserved it,” he says.
25. Interview with Casper Heindel.
26. “I’m not sure I paid tax on that either,” Warren adds.
27. In her memoir, Leila wrote that Warren would not let her touch the money.
28. Roger Bell, who confirms the story in an interview, was saving war-bond stamps until he had enough to buy an actual bond, and cashed them in to fund the trip. “I told my mother we were going, but she didn’t believe me,” he says.
29. Interview with Roger Bell.
30. From Buffett’s 1944 report cards.
31. Based on comments in his report cards.
32. Interview with Norma Thurston-Perna.
33. Queen Wilhelmina owned stock in the Dutch holding company that had bought The Westchester.
34. He collected the bus passes from various routes. “They were colorful. I collected anything.” Asked if anyone else in his family ever collected anything: “No. They were more popular.”
35. Customers also discarded old magazines in the stairwells, and Warren would pick them up.
36. While Warren recalls the story, it was Lou Battistone who remembered its fascinating details.
37. Interview with Lou Battistone.