1. “Warming Up for the Big Time: Can John Tunney Make It as a Heavyweight?” Charles T. Powers, West magazine (Los Angeles Times), December 12, 1971.
2. Interview with Tom Murphy.
3. This version of the story is an amalgamation of Murphy’s and Buffett’s versions. The stories are identical except for trivial differences in their recollection of the dialogue.
4. 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.
5. “I should have done it,” Buffett says. “That was really dumb. We would have made a lot of money with that.”
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. The average contribution at the time of the Sun’s story was $1.62. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.
9. Ibid. Robert Dorr, “Hard-Core Delinquent Rarity at Boys Town,” Omaha World-Herald, April 16, 1972.
10. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978. Williams was the editor during the Boys Town investigation.
11. 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.”
12. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 1975.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.
16. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing.
17. 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.
18. Jeannie Lipsey Rosenblum described his appearance at that time in an interview.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. Interview with Randy Brown.
22. In his follow-up columns in the Sun.
23. The $25 million is combined fund-raising and investment income.
24. The Sun published on Thursdays and worked around its own production schedule while trying to cut off the opportunity for a preemptive response through the Omaha World-Herald.
25. Paul Williams, Investigative Reporting and Editing, and Craig Tomkinson, “The Weekly Editor: Boys Town Finances Revealed,” Editor & Publisher, April 15, 1972.
26. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.
27. The reporters interviewed thirteen of the seventeen board members. Two were too old or ill to be interviewed.
28. Msgr. Schmitt, speaking at a press conference on May 22, 1972. Press conference transcript.
29. Interview with Randy Brown.
30. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys.”
31. Michael D. LaMontia, director of the State Department of Public Institutions, which oversaw Boys Town, called the Sun’s criticisms those of a “vocal minority” that should be ignored in a letter to Wegner, May 25, 1972. The Sun, he said, speaks “from a very low profile and is really not heard by many people. The person being attacked can let it die a natural death.…” He referred to the reporters as “scavengers” and “professional losers.” Possibly Mr. LaMontia was merely being empathetic, but his tone seemed a little more charged-up than that.
32. Paul N. Williams, “Boys Town, An Exposé Without Bad Guys.”
33. “Boys Town Bonanza,” Time, April 10, 1972; “Boys Town’s Worth Put at $209 Million,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1972; “Money Machine,” Newsweek, April 10, 1972; Tomkinson, “The Weekly Editor.”
34. “Other Boys Homes Affected by Boys Town Story,” Omaha Sun, December 14, 1972.
35. Undated two-page letter from Francis P. Schmitt to Boys Town supporters printed on Boys Town stationery; “Boys Town May Take Legal Steps to Initiate New Programs, Policies,” Omaha Sun, December 14, 1972; correspondence between Paul Williams and the “Irreverent Reverend” Lester Kinsolving of the National Newspaper Syndicate Inc. of America, a muckraking religious columnist widely syndicated through the San Francisco Chronicle. Schmitt was angry because, among other things, Boys Town’s marketing domicile had backfired: Kinsolving wrote a follow-up story in the Washington Evening Star, “Boys Town Money Machine” (November 4, 1972), and datelined it Boys Town, Nebraska. Schmitt (incorrectly) felt that he had no right to do so.
36. Paul Critchlow, “Boys Town Money Isn’t Buying Happiness,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 20, 1973.
37. The Reverend Monsignor Wegner, letter to a man who said he was an employee of the San Francisco Examiner and worked in the composing room, June 1, 1973. The man wrote Lester Kinsolving at the San Francisco Chronicle and asked that his name not be used in a story, probably because he was offering it to a competing paper. Kinsolving apparently forwarded this material to Buffett.
38. Warren Buffett letter to Edward Morrow, April 21, 1972.
39. Memo from Paul Williams to Buffett, October 13, 1972, including Buffett’s comments.
40. Mick Rood note to personal files, January 19, 1973. Transcript, Mick Rood interview with Msgr. Nicholas Wegner.
41. The award was to “The Sun Newspapers of Omaha, of The Sun Newspapers of Omaha: For uncovering the large financial resources of Boys Town, Nebraska, leading to reforms in this charitable organization’s solicitation and use of funds contributed by the public.” It was the first time a weekly paper won for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting (although according to Pulitzer Center staff, weeklies had won before in categories other than investigative reporting).
42. However, Msgr. Wegner was described as “frail” and had had several recent surgeries. See Paul Critchlow, “Boys Town Money Isn’t Buying Happiness.”
43. In 1973, Boys Town actually raised more money than in 1972 (over $6 million), according to the Omaha World-Herald (March 21, 1973). The main result of the exposé and resulting reforms was increased transparency and accountability over how the money was spent.
44. George Jerome Goodman (writing as “Adam Smith”), Supermoney. New York: Random House, 1972. Goodman (known as Jerry) chose his pen name after Adam Smith, the father of market economics.
45. John Brooks, “A Wealth of Notions,” Washington Post, October 22, 1972.