1. Interview with Astrid Buffett.
2. From a close friend of the family.
3. Buffett explained in conversation and a letter to the author how he felt, separating his life into two stages with age forty-seven as the turning point.
4. To the end of her life, Estey wrote letters with “Mrs. Benjamin Graham” embossed on her stationery.
5. Interview with the author, 2003.
6. Interview with Stan Lipsey.
7. Interview with Sharon Osberg.
8. Interview with Peter Buffett.
9. The price included $1.5 million in pension liabilities. Blue Chip Stamps Annual Report, 1977. Blue Chip borrowed $30 million from a bank in April 1977 to finance the purchase.
10. Berkshire had assets of $379 million, Blue Chip had $200 million, DRC had $67.5 million at year-end 1977.
11. Warren and Susie personally owned 46% of Berkshire (both directly and indirectly, through their ownership of Blue Chip and Diversified, which owned Berkshire stock), and 35% of Blue Chip (both directly and indirectly).
12. Murray Light, From Butler to Buffett: The Story Behind the Buffalo News (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004), who notes that only in the face of an inquiry from the Human Rights Commission in the early 1970s did Butler begin publishing wedding photos of African-Americans.
13. The Evening News put out a Saturday edition, but its weak ad lineage demonstrated the power of the Sunday edition of the Courier-Express.
14. If the trend had continued without the Evening News starting a Sunday paper, the logical outcome would have been either a joint operating agreement or outright acquisition of the Courier-Express to combine the papers—both expensive alternatives.
15. Buffalo Courier-Express, Inc., v. Buffalo Evening News, Inc., Complaint for Damages and Injunctive Relief for Violation of the Federal Antitrust Laws (October 28, 1977).
16. Chuck Rickershauser had by now left Munger, Tollis to become the head of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. His replacement, Ron Olson, was part of a team Munger had assembled from Los Angeles.
17. Interview with Ron Olson.
18. Jonathan R. Laing, “The Collector: Investor Who Piled Up $100 Million in the ’60s Piles Up Firms Today,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 1977.
19. Testimony of Buffett, Buffalo Courier-Express, Inc., v. Buffalo Evening News, Inc., November 4, 1977.
20. In Roger Lowenstein’s Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Bob Russell cited Warren as a boy wanting to charge money to people driving by the Russells’ house. Buffett does not remember the incident, but if it occurred, most likely he was influenced by the city’s efforts to convert the Douglas Street toll bridge—the only passageway over the Missouri River—to a free bridge, one of the most widely reported local news stories during his early youth.
21. The bridge was sold to Marty Maroun in 1979 for $30 million, 30% less than the inflation-adjusted cost of building it thirty years earlier. Maroun parlayed the bridge into an enormous fortune.
22. Findings and Conclusions, Motion for Preliminary Injunction, Buffalo Courier-Express, Inc., v. Buffalo Evening News, Inc., November 9, 1977.
23. Dick Hirsch, “Read All About It,” “Bflo Tales” in Business First, Winter 1978.
24. In its first full year under Buffett. Murray Light, From Butler to Buffett.
25. Interview with Stan Lipsey.
26. Ibid.
27. Buffalo-Courier Express, Inc., v. Buffalo Evening News, Inc., United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 601 F.2d 48, April 16, 1979.
28. Warren Buffett, “You Pay a Very High Price in the Stock Market for a Cheery Consensus,” Forbes, August 6, 1979.
29. Warren Buffett, “You Pay a Very High Price in the Stock Market …”
30. Blue Chip Stamps 1980 annual report to shareholders.
31. Janet Lowe, Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger, New York: John, Wiley & Sons, 2000.
32. Ibid.
33. Warren Buffett memo to employees, December 2, 1980.
34. At first, management and the unions tried to publish without the drivers (Buffalo Evening News, December 2, 1980). The striking union walked out over a pay difference of $41 a week.
35. It was selling 195,000 papers on Sundays, about two-thirds of its rival’s sales. From Lowenstein, Buffett; Audit Bureau of Circulations figures as of March 1982.
36. The Blue Chip Stamps 1980 annual report to shareholders notes the litigation became “less active and costly” that year.
37. Interview with Ron Olson.