Susie Buffett Interview: How Warren Buffett Handled Money with His Kids

you know he was talking the other night about some uh baseball something and he knows more stats and more history and more you know everything he absorbs everything and but the amazing thing is he remembers it after he absorbs it it sticks there somewhere so i just think he reads for um you know for whatever's there it's a lot of business but he's also very interested in what's going on in the community he's interested in the sports all over the country particularly the huskers you know everything it's amazing to me how much he knows and retains he's an intense worker but i don't know if that's the same as being a hard worker not that he wouldn't work hard and doesn't work hard but he's at the point in his life now where i think um you know he has a lot of control over what he does with his time so uh i think he worked harder when i was younger in the sense that he spent well i was gonna say that he spent more time at it but he still spends a lot of time at it you know he would live at the office if he could live at the office he would just have the bed there and uh live there so i still don't know the answer to that i have to think about that he um he used to rock me to sleep at night and sing over the rainbow so i have this insanely sentimental attachment to that song um and he actually did a karaoke version that i have on somewhere on a cd in my house um as a gift for me one time um he he would just i think the house was a little crazy with howie and uh so he would come home and um sit in the bedroom with me and rock me to sleep and sing so which was really a lovely memory for me and um and you know the song is just uh it's huge for me that song is really it's why i have all these wizard of oz things around the house he was there physically he was uh for me and i think my brothers would have a different answer to this for me he was more present i think um i remember one day coming home from school and there was a big box on the dining room table and there was a new dress in it and there was a slowpoke sucker i was about eight years old and my dad took me to the ballet now at the time that's all it was it was great but it was that now that i'm older i'm sure my mother forced him to do it i'm sure he didn't want to go but i never knew that at the time so he would do stuff with me that um was uh very sweet and thoughtful um and so and he and he was always there i mean he was there for homework help although it was sort of hopeless to get math help from him because he could get the answer and then he couldn't explain how he got it so it didn't really matter um but um he was uh and he was at the dinner table every night and very present at the dinner table and we i mean i've always had a very strong sense of how much it mattered to him to be you know sort of in the house and there [Music] this is an interesting question to think about um and i have a very close relationship with him now i think i've always had a really close relationship with him i always had the sense that he was there whenever we needed him well he was there whenever we needed him because he was physically present a lot of my friends had dads who traveled a lot my dad was in the house and there so i always i guess there was some sense to me that he was uh always available for anything i never felt like if we went in the room and he was reading which he was always reading he was always reading um that we couldn't interrupt him or talk to him or that he wouldn't have time for us or that you know that that didn't happen well i always told my mother we have to talk in sound bites because you i and sometimes i have gone in this office once in a while not very often and said i need 10 minutes of attention focus here uh and uh if you can't do it i'll come over to your house tonight because if the phone rings and you're going to answer it we can't be doing that right just right now uh and he'll do it he he i've never had him say you know no to that but uh i don't ask for it very often and it's not because he doesn't want to it's because i don't think he can do it that often um so if you learn to talk in sound bites and uh he can just hear what you need he will uh you know he's then he's there but it i learned that early on that if you start you know going into some long thing unless you've explained to him ahead of time that it's going to be a long thing and you need him to hang in there you lose him you lose him to whatever giant thought he has in his head at the time that he was probably thinking about before you came in and really wants to get back to and he gets back to it sometimes while you're mid-sentence if you don't catch him right there you know i've always said she is the reason berkshire hathaway is berkshire hathaway because my mother totally um supported him enabled him um you know she she got it very early that he was going to be this i mean i don't think she knew what it was going to turn into but she knew that there was something big there and he needed that space and that uh support to let it happen and she did that and i don't think most women would have actually been able to do what she did at all he's an amazing person starting with his integrity and um there's not you know an ounce of greed there in him and never has been and never will be he doesn't he doesn't really care about the money he's doing what he does what he loves to do and by accident you know he makes a whole bunch of money doing it but if he if he didn't make a whole bunch of money he'd be okay with that as long as he was doing it i think there's a competitive piece to him that wants to do it better than anyone if he can but the mark of that ha by accident is the money in this it's not um it wouldn't matter if it was something else if it was something he loved and he was doing really well we grew up in this very normal sort of situation i would say kind of the regular father knows best kind of situation um he uh we had we got an allowance we all walked right out the door the minute we got it and went to three different drug stores and bought candy and magazines and you know did whatever we did with it um and then i'm sure he's told you the slot machine story but yeah so he's no dope here kids put the money in the slot machine then of course he opens the back and gets all his money back um [Music] but uh he wasn't he wasn't really my mother was more you know the person who dealt with the money in the house when we were kids and i worked and had my own eye this thing in my room wasn't a piggy bank but it was where i dropped you know all my paycheck money from my job so i never felt like he was cheap or whatever word you want to use for him thrifty um yeah i mean there's the famous story about the kitchen uh with me i had some trouble with that one just because i thought i was asking for a loan i was not asking him to give me the money and i thought oh come on can't you do this but i think i used to joke with my mother i said i'm going to be on the cover of people magazine someday homeless because my dad will be like this super rich guy and you know we'll all be wandering around um but he's he definitely has loosened up as we've gotten older i think part of it is that um well part of it's my mother of course she i'm sure was just you know poking at him slowly for years and um the other part is i think you know he's got three children now who are adults and we're not going to turn into different people whatever we are we are and you know it's not that bad so it doesn't make him nervous anymore but i you know i just i basically i think he's been right well the first thing that comes into my mind is she was and i think almost everybody who ever knew her would say that she was one of the best people you'd ever know ever she was completely non-judgmental and could see the good in anyone i always used to say she could explain to you why jeffrey dahmer cut those people up and put them in the freezer and you know poor jeffrey he must have had this happen and that happened he didn't really mean to do this i mean my mother's the only person who could find some good in everyone um and i think everybody felt like they were her best friend um because she and and the reason they would have felt that way is because the care and interest she had in them was genuine um i don't know how she did it i mean sometimes i just think you know it was very real i called i called her at the plaza hotel one time years ago she and my dad were in new york they had just gotten there my dad answered the phone he said well mom's out in the hall she's been out there with the bellman for about half an hour i thought well of course she is pretty soon she's going to come back she's going to know all his kids names she's going to be sending him a check for the daughter's dance camp she's and and she'll call him in a few months to check and see how things are going because she'll care she was very very unusual that way and it was you know it was 100 percent authentic i've never known anybody who had so much ability for unconditional love and um uh complete just sort of acceptance of who you were whoever you were well it's a little hard for me to talk about early on because i was you know busy being three um but i know he came he was a very awkward uh insecure young man um i mean i'm sure he's told you that they had a special room for him at the school because he was such a problem and he you know i mean he he was which i always sort of like to tell especially young people because i think you know if you screwed up or you know you look look what this guy turned into and not just the money but the person that he is the human being that he is um so anything's possible pretty much um but my mother uh i'm sure as she did with everyone but did it in a more intense way with my dad i mean she can see the good in everyone she could see the potential um she i think understood how much pain was there and she was really good with people who were in pain or had experienced you know some personal pain and she was very good at sort of you know she functions function in a lot of ways as a therapist honestly because she would ask a lot of questions she cared deeply and then she would sort of help you think about things differently or um i think with my dad she um uh talked to him a lot about where the pain was coming from why you know whatever was going on with him was going on she probably heard him um i mean i'm i'm sure that some of the things he probably said to her early on about how successful he might be or what he wanted to do or i'm sure she probably thought oh right you know we'll see but then of course it came true um but she would have been very supportive and nurturing and you know i he you know like i said he was present in the house physically and he was there but he was upstairs reading all the time and uh she really in some ways had to develop her own life outside of that which i completely get um but i mean she was always so loving towards him and so um she would uh you know she would always publicly talk about you know how great how smart how wonderful which she believed and it's all true um i just think it was sort of over the years it just sort of um you know it was what he needed i don't know how to describe it exactly i mean they had a very um you know physically together they were very sweet with each other you know she was so physically affectionate with him and he was with her but i don't know if he would have been that way if she hadn't sort of initiated all of it and made him so comfortable um but she was very they were very um you know they had you could tell they loved each other it was it was very clear to me that they did my mother came from such a different kind of childhood um so it certainly wasn't from her personal experience that she was you know able to do that but i think she um you know she did that with so many people on a smaller level of course because she wasn't married to them and living with them but she was somebody i mean that's why i mean she just had all these people who um you know just she functions she functioned as a therapist for a lot of people because she would listen to people about their family stuff and their personal stuff and you know whatever was going on in their lives and and would sort of talk them through it and get them to look at things differently think about things differently um and feel better in the end it's it is interesting to me that they both came from these very conservative republican families um so similar in so many ways and my both sets of grandparents were actually friends separately um i it i still sort of think how did this how did they come out the way they did because it's completely not you know what they were getting at home from their parents at all i mean my grandpa thompson was he had this little chair we called his nest when he was older and he would sit there and he had all his stuff around him and there were two pictures little cut out black and white pictures taped on the wall next to him and one was my mother and one was ronald reagan you know so it's just is it's funny to me i don't i'm sure it was my mother who but i will say my dad probably from his dad still had a deep sense of sort of um you know what's right and sort of human rights and i mean so he would have gotten this some of the integrity part of him would have come from his father um so it just got sort of morphed into a more liberal democrat kind of thing but i'm sure my mother you know she got involved in this panel of american women it was a big thing and a lot of civil rights were going on in omaha in their early 60s and she was very active and you know my dad was there and i'm sure she came home and talked to him about it and you know i think he probably just agreed with her and felt like she was doing the right thing and yeah but i i do think that periodically about how uh how strange it is that they both came out of these super nice people i mean my mother's parents could not have been more they were wonderful people but and part of grandpa's thing i mean i used to think you know part of grandpa's thing was he would just kind of poke at you to get you to argue with him so i'm not i i you know sometimes i think he said things he didn't even think were true to get you to think about what you were saying and argue with him so but he still had ronald reagan's picture taped next to him i i'm the oldest grandchild on that side so i was 10 when grandpa died and we spent a huge amount of time with all of my grandparents actually when we were kids um so i have a lot of memories of grandpa we used to take these rides out in the country and they had i still can't figure out now how we did this but they had a car that had like a luggage rack thing along the back i guess i don't know i don't think it was that unusual at the time and my cousin and i used to like flip around on the luggage rack and um we spent a huge amount of time with with uh all of my grandparents when we were kids so i have a lot of memories of grandpa and then my grandma didn't die until i was i don't know what 30 some years old so i remember her very well i you know both i i remember all my grandparents she was a tough cookie um you know i didn't personally experience anything um you know with her i got along with her actually quite well and i but you know i was also the one who was here and i was at the end of her life the last few years i was the one you know taking her to the doctor and paying the bills and i did a lot of stuff at the end the last probably five or six years um for her so i was in in high school i mean i graduated in 1971 so i was in high junior high in high school in the 60s and omaha there was a lot more going on here than probably people think that weren't here um and i was in a very racially mixed high school so we had plenty going on actually in school too and my mother was very active in the north omaha community and she was physically present and uh involved with a lot of agencies in north omaha doing her panel of american work um american women um and and she was right there on the ground working my dad was 100 supportive but i and i think the only reason he probably wasn't more there is it was um he was you know he was doing his job so but he was um completely supportive and you know he did do some things he he helped start the boys club here um with his uncle fred he and he was quite active in that um he helped start the black bank here and then of course he tried to join highland country club the all jewish country club uh while his friend nick newman tried to join the non-jewish club um basically to force it to happen and um and he was and he was he cared a lot about that because um it was something i think he thought he could do and he could make it happen and it mattered that it happened and um so he was he was not doing a lot personally um but he he did a few things in a big way and he was 100 behind my mother um she was singing all the time when we were kids uh she [Music] it was mo that most that happened after i left being the oldest of the three of us um and she loved i mean she loved singing and when she got sick actually one of the things that she was most worried about was that she wouldn't be able to sing again um but she uh i think when once howie and i were both gone um and my dad being the the character that he is um i mean i think she figured out she was gonna have to figure something out for her life because my mother would never in a million years have been happy being mrs warren buffett i mean that is so not who she was um and so staying in omaha i think would have meant to her oh gosh you know getting involved in all kinds of stuff that just was so not her thing i mean it just it would have it would have killed her she couldn't have done it um so i think the singing was a great outlet for her she loved it um she saw it as uh you know i think it was something that was just her and my dad loved it too i mean he was so supportive of that and um so i think she started to think i probably once howie was out of the house for sure she started to see the writing on the wall here and um [Music] you know just started trying to figure out how she could at least have some more as she called it you know a room of her own which ended up being outside not a room in omaha um so it was it was partly the singing but i think it was also you know howie uh well that came later i was going to say how he you know married a woman with four great girls and then they had their own child and you know it it started to morph into this thing where there were a lot of grandchildren and you know she just wanted to spend more time traveling around and doing things but i was so kind of not there during the singing stuff you know i knew it was happening but i only saw her saying a couple times because i lived in california at the time i do remember uh i i it was devastating for him and i came home because i i i can't say i was mad at her exactly but i kept thinking how can you leave him he's so he can't function by himself he can go to the office and do all that stuff but i'm not sure he knows how to make a piece of toast so um uh i came home i was i you know i had a hard time understanding it i understand it really well now but i had a hard time understanding it at the time um uh i stayed home for and i lived i stayed at the house with him i don't even know if he remembers this it's funny because i remember a lot about it but i remember doing his laundry at one point and you know whatever it got done and i folded it and took it upstairs or something and he said well that was fast and i thought he probably is not he probably thinks it takes six days to do the laundry i don't know he's never done anything like this um but i stay i just stayed with him because i was so worried about him and um i think i was i think i was home for at least a month then i went back to california i'm not sure what i was doing about my job now that i think about it but um then uh i i i don't remember talking to her a lot about it at the time but uh you know i mean every life went on and everybody got used to it but it was a hard time i know it was a hard time for him i mean i can't even imagine what he felt like in fact i did make a joke at one point i said you know mom could we could make a tape of mom yelling you know bye warren i'll be back later and then have the door slam and you would just think she was here because he was always off reading and doing something you know and he didn't i don't think he knew what she was doing most of the time you know she was off doing stuff either with the kids or in the community um and then she had you know we used to joke we had that little we had a door hanger that had lucy from peanuts in her you know her little psychiatric booth that says the doctor is in and we would hang it on the door at the house because she would go she would leave the house at like 11 11 30 at night and be gone for hours and she would be driving around seeing what i used to call her patients and that's what she would do she would go around and you know visit people who were having problems with whatever and um you know listen to him so she wasn't really spending time with my dad that was the funny part so you know that's why i told him at one point i said you would just make a tape of her you'll think she's here then well yeah and there's many versions of this story and i can only tell you my version um because i and i think this is true um although i've heard so many other versions who knows what's true um i knew ostrich before my parents did um ostrich was friends with other friends of mine she's a little she's older than i am but uh but she used to work down in the old market and i would be down there when i was home i lived in california but when i came home everybody hung out down there and we were down there so i knew her i didn't know her well but i did know her before my parents did and then she got to know my mother from being at the french cafe and uh so and oscar's a very sweet person she's a she's a true caregiver really um so my mother had told multiple women i mean i i can name him but i want right now uh to sort of look in on him you know because as we all know as she said before he can't find the light switch so um i mean my aunt dottie was one you know and and uh so there were several women friends of his who i think were calling out to go to movies and you know not to date him just to hang out give him something to do so astrid was one of them and um she you know i i don't think my mother well i'm almost sure this is true i don't think my mother asked oscar to move in with him that i'm sure did not happen um i think that was a surprise um but i also think you know what my mother made the choice to move so something's going to happen eventually so i think that my dad knew us well i'm sure he knew ostrich before my mother moved because she was down there at the cafe when my mother was singing and astrid was around the house actually sometimes my mother was having parties with people that were um you know involved at the french cafe and that she knew from the market and ostrich was around i mean she she'd been in the house before i think before my mother i know before my mother left um so i don't think it was quite the setup that people make it sound like i think there were more women this sounds kind of weird but there were more women you know she'd asked a bunch of her friends check him out check in on him take him some soup go to a movie whatever and ostrich was one of them and you know she ended up staying and my mother and us were very close you know they really really loved each other i have the sweetest card that my mother saved that ostrich wrote when she was sick i don't think it was the last time she was sick i think it was another time i'm not sure but i mean it's just a very beautiful little card that ostrich sent saying how worried she was about her and she loved her and you know i mean so strange as it may seem to people i always think you know who cares if it's working between the people who are directly involved who cares what anyone thinks um you know i think that my mother was she she loved astrid as a person and i think she also was glad that she was there because she you know she loved my dad she wanted him taken care of and happy and ostrich is there's no one better than ostrich i mean she's just she loves my dad she wouldn't care if he had one cent i mean she just loves him and um so that was you know worked well for everyone ostrich didn't want to be out traveling around with my dad my mother and my dad traveled together and you know went to visit the grandchildren and did stuff with you know some of my dad's friends in new york who now have become friends with oster too um and you know in this very weird way it worked and i do remember my mother telling me one time that a friend of hers and i will not name the person because she is still alive but uh said you know i i wish i could have done that you know she said and you know i i think that it was very uh you know it was unconventional and i'm sure looked weird to people but nobody was faking anything i mean my mother wasn't acting like she liked oscar ostridge wasn't act you know it was all it was all real and it worked you know we had christmas together every year um until 2002 was the last christmas cause 2003 she was sick um yeah i mean it was just you know it just turned into this sort of new normal um and everybody was fine with it you know my kids never didn't know astrid ashford was like in some ways ostrich was um you know she was more present in their life and a lot of the time than my mother just because they went over to her house when they were little they were over the house all the time spending time with her and so the younger kids didn't know anything different i don't know how they ever sorted it out in their head when they were younger my grandpa did christmas he's with grandma and you know i don't know but um you know just and it i think it probably took a few years to kind of figure out how it was going to all work and uh but then it just kind of turned into what it was and i don't everybody just kind of understood it well i actually um was in arizona with her in october of 2003 and she had had the biopsy the day before she came to arizona so i was with her in arizona at this fortune most powerful women's conference and she told me that she'd had a biopsy the day before and i didn't really think much of it um so then we got home and the biopsy results were not good it was stage four oral cancer and i still didn't really know what that meant because i'd never known anybody that had oral cancer so um and you know some cancer is not horrible and some is a death sentence and oral cancer i think is sort of somewhere in between um so she called me and told me this and uh i think i think i looked it up on the internet i can remember actually where i was sitting when all this was going on and it was such a weird thing because at the time what i read was it's black men who drink and smoke and i thought okay she's none of those things so including she didn't smoke or drink so um my dad i can't i i think i may have called my dad and told him not to look on the internet um which i'm sure he'd already done uh so it wasn't too long after that we did go she and i went to new york to visit um a doctor at sloane kettering she she knew she wanted to do it in san francisco but she wanted to just get have somebody else look at her x-rays or whatever they had um so our biopsy report um so we went to see this doctor in new york and on the way in the cab she said now if i forget to ask the question will you please remember to ask him if i can still color my hair after i have the surgery it's like okay so we're in there for this like sort of awful thing and uh we're leaving and i said you forgot to ask the question mom she said what and i said she wants to know if she can still color her hair after the surgery he said yes that's okay so um and then we flew back to california and and i i'm sure at that point we'd already scheduled everything and um it was quite a big surgery and it turned out to be less than they thought it was gonna be it was still i think twelve and a half hours or something they thought they were gonna have to take uh the bone out of her leg to rebuild some bone in her mouth but they didn't have to do that if they'd had to do that i can't even imagine how much worse it would have been but they still had to take a whole bunch of tissue from her arm to put inside her mouth after they did you know the stuff they had to do with their tongue so i we all we were all there um and uh my dad and my brothers left after a few days and it was it was really awful for a while i mean she was in the icu and it was really awful she couldn't talk and she couldn't i mean she had a trachea out i mean it was really bad um [Music] and then i stayed with her for a month i think and then i really was with her for the next about uh four months or so with a few short exceptions i came home for christmas because it was the first christmas we were going to have without being in california um so i came home a little bit off and on but i i really stayed almost the whole time my dad came out every weekend it was hard it was not it was hard i mean because it was such an awful you know she couldn't talk she couldn't swallow she couldn't eat she couldn't you know it was terrible i mean he do you want to see him read the paper that's what that's when he reads the paper the morning the day she was going into the surgery that morning uh he and i were in the hospital room with her and they were going to take her in like you know in 10 minutes and she said to me come here come here so we went in the bathroom and he's you know like this reading the paper i'm sure he's crying behind the paper he's just sitting there and uh she said no you know he's a wuss she said i told him they were gonna you know do whatever they do initially and within 45 minutes they would know if the cancer had spread so she said i told him if the cancer spread i want them to close me up and not do anything else she said i don't think he's going to tell him that's okay i think he's going to tell him to do whatever they can do so she said you have to make sure he does that i said okay so fortunately the cancer hadn't spread but um and then they you know took her off into the operating room and and about 45 minutes later dr eisley came in and said um it hadn't spread this is this is how freaked out my dad is so and we all are but you know he just this is really huge um dr eisley comes in and says it hasn't spread you know we're going to continue now it's going to be a long time uh and we said okay and so he walked away and my dad looked at me and he said what'd he say did it spread or not says i said no it didn't spread oh okay and then he felt like we could go get something to eat you know he just but he it he didn't even hear it so you know that's it was um it's funny he there's some of it he just can't you know he just can't the thought of something happening to her was just for him you know it's just the worst thing that could happen but she you know she came out and i think he probably needed to go home at that point he needs to go you know disappear into his office and um he knows she's got excellent care and he knows um i'm there and you know i'm gonna call him if there's any reason to call him and he showed up every weekend and the first time he showed up actually it was kind of funny he caught it was probably the week you know like a week later or something and he called me and he said you know let's go to johnny rockets when i get there get some dinner and i said okay but i said we have to get i have to get mom in bed first now she's in bed in the hospital but there's like a whole thing that has to happen i said i have to get her you know ready for bed before i can leave and uh he said well how long does that take i said it takes about two hours it does i said yeah but it was great because he came and he sat in the room and he watched you know what all the stuff that we had to do to just to get her ready to sort of kind of go to sleep for the night um and then we went to johnny rockets and you know he was uh he was good we surprised him the one time that she um when she finally took the thing they had removed the tracheotomy thing whatever it is and um we didn't tell him that when he got there that time she was going to actually be able to talk and so that was kind of a fun moment she loved you two and um so at night um every night when she went to bed i obviously went to bed she was already in bed but when she went to bed we would uh she had a feeding tube and uh so um and she couldn't talk so she would write these notes to me i it's funny i i have a huge pile of paper of all the notes she wrote to me when she was sick she didn't know i kept them sorry um because some of them were so funny but uh she would write me a note every night of the song we had the rattle and hum dvd which is an old dvd and she loved it and we um she would write the songs that she wanted to listen to that night and the last song was always um all i want is you and so we would play this would show them on the dvd the songs and then she would uh we would shoot the pain meds into the feeding tube and the sleeping meds and then we'd put on all i wanted you and she would go to sleep to that so in november i was in washington at the library of congress at something with bono and he said and they hadn't met either and he said how's your mom doing and i said uh i said she's you know she's doing fine and uh i said she listens to she watches the rattle and hum dvd every night before she goes to sleep he said really i said yes and i said and she listens to different songs every night but we always end on the same song so when she died he called and he said uh i want to come and sing the song at her service which was really sweet yeah she met him on may 10th which is his birthday and it was mother's day that year um they bono and uh ali and i think both the girls jordan and eve were in new york and we were there it was after the berkshire meeting and i mean she was like a little kid she was so excited so excited to meet him and um uh so they came over to the hotel and we had uh lunch and you know just we had the dining room in the suite and it was really nice and they they just had a very sort of instant really wonderful connection and he brought her over on my wall over there this very amazing painting that he did of her as a total surprise um and actually he told me when he they katrina his assistant had asked for a picture of my mother for this painting that he wanted to do and um we sent him the picture that's in the painting over here which is her in ghana uh she was dancing with a lot of women in ghana and bono said to me you know it was so interesting when i got that picture because he said most people send sort of a you know a head headshot but he said i got this picture of your mother and he said it just it sort of captured who she was even though i didn't know her so he did this really very cool thing that's over there um for her and they just had a and then she and i went to france and stayed um at his house in eze in late gym right before she died and that was uh she wasn't sure she was gonna be able to make the trip but um it was really i mean it gave her such energy to be there on the way home she never went to sleep she had the headphones on and she was listening to you too the whole way and just how i said what happened down there he said she's like just like a new person so it was very it's it was a short but very um lovely relationship no she did not die of cancer i think everyone thinks that she died of a stroke um she had she and my dad had gone to cody wyoming which they did every year with a bunch of friends herb allen has a ranch there and um uh i was in boston at the democratic convention and for some strange reason i decided to come home a day early and uh i had come home i was dead tired from being up way too late every night and um i was going to watch i think it was john kerry was going to speak that night and uh my dad called and said i need dr eisley's phone number this was i don't know eight o'clock at night or something and i i i didn't ask why or anything i just thought boy this is not good whatever it is i got him dr eisley's phone number and then he called back about 45 minutes later maybe not quite that long and he said something happened to mom i'm in an ambulance you need to come now i thought well you know he would call me if she stubbed her toe so we're gonna figure this out i said okay so i called netjets and uh got a plane and he called back again and he said um you need to find your brothers and bring them so i said okay so um i peter was in omaha and i called peter and i said there's a plane at midnight or whatever time it was and howie i found devin in the walgreens in indiana on her cell phone and i said where's howie and she said he's on his way to south africa he's in a plane so i said okay i don't know what's going on i'm still in my head thinking we'll get this figured out so um i said just have him call me when you know he lands i think devin gave me the phone number of somebody who's picking them up or something anyway somehow i figured out what i was supposed to do and uh peter and i got on the plane and i packed a bag for like three weeks because i totally in my head i'm thinking okay we're going to call in the nurses we're going to call on kathleen my mother's assistant for ever the most amazing person and we'll fix this so because my mother had this little group of nurses that had taken care of her and um so how peter and i landed i don't think i talked i well i think i did talk to howie right before he must have just landed before we took off um and i told him i said i don't know what's going on but i'll call you and so we um uh got to cody it's the weirdest thing for me i i was in the hospital with mrs graham after she fell and so there was a lot of sort of deja vu her it was during a herb thing and it was a hospital that's there for skiing accidents and not you know people having strokes and so we went into the hospital room and my dad was sitting there he'd been sitting there all night holding her hand i was so proud of him because he hadn't done any you know excess measures or whatever you know he he when it came down to it he knew what he was supposed to do and he did it um which was nothing um she had a little oxygen thing on her face and i thought this is so interesting because she had told me a few months earlier that her biggest fear was dying suffocating and dying and so i thought well she's that she's not going to be gasping for breath so that's good she didn't want that and um uh my dad went to sleep then and peter went to sleep and i sat with her and my one regret is i didn't bring my ipod i thought oh she would have loved to have some music playing but i forgot that part um so i sat with her and uh i just kept putting my hand on her heart to see if she was breathing and um at one point you know i didn't feel anything so i went on i got the nurse and i said um can you come in here and she said no she's gone so i have to say one of the worst moments of my life was waking my dad up to tell him that it was horrible and a total shock you know she'd been fine she'd been fine they went off to cody and she was fine and they were having dinner and you know she didn't feel well after dinner and she had the stroke so you know he just was sad crying sad i thought in my head at the time i thought god i don't know if he'll ever get out of bed i mean this is like the worst thing ever and um but he did i mean but we you know so we went um took a while to get out of the hospital because they have to do all this stuff with you know she's in wyoming and we have to move her out of the state and all this there's a lot of paperwork that goes on then and you know he had to do stuff with um mark hamburg at berkshire and make sure that whatever stock-wise you know all that stuff and there were a few people that i needed to call because i didn't want them to hear it on the news i mean obviously howie but there were a couple other people um so i did that and uh i sat in the room with her i just didn't for some reason i didn't want her to be by herself um so everybody kind of went into their little jobs that we had to do and then we flew her home it was the day before my birthday so i got home and i went to the mortuary and did what i had to do at the mortuary my dad got under the covers and uh i got home from the marcher in the doorbell rang and it was the ups man with my birthday presents from my mother which i opened last year i waited 10 years she told us the music she wanted only family um and she uh yeah and then she had one thing she wanted me to read you know she had she had given us some stuff the only thing she didn't tell me was where to put her ashes so i figured well she must have figured i could figure that out because that's the only thing i actually didn't know um but uh she's been telling me since i was you know 10 years old what funeral we had a joke about her funeral music and uh so all of a sudden she died and i thought uh oh now i have to remember all those songs which i remembered all but one um so i had brad underwood come over and uh he put together this whole uh thing of the music for us and um and then we actually put i had played one of peter's songs and then uh we ended the service with her singing here's to life because it just seemed perfect um so yeah i mean she's the funeral music has been queued up for years well then bono the first call i got actually when we landed was him saying you know can i come sing and i thought well it's going to be so little i don't know if it's worth your time really um but he said no i really want to do this so he um he flew in with ally his wife and bobby shriver and practiced with mike the night before my son might play the guitar and bono sang which was amazing of him and beautiful i don't think so i don't think anything would have threatened my mother really because their relationship was so solid and so it was sort of such a different relationship than he would ever ever have with anyone else that i don't think i don't think anything threatened my mother at all um uh no i mean i i don't think i don't think so in fact i just can't imagine and i just adored mrs graham i mean she and i had a very close relationship so i don't think so she was working with alan greenberg my ex-husband who still runs the foundation and is amazing doing women's reproductive health work around the world and then there was a there's a little piece too that's college scholarships it's not that little it's 20 some million dollars but uh uh my mother loved traveling to sort of the worst parts of the world and meeting the people and spending time with them and learning about what you know what she and the foundation could do to make their lives better 110 i am so proud of what we do and and we have our board meetings and i just think i almost cried every board meeting because i just think she would be so proud it's absolutely what she would do and that is my biggest job in my opinion is to make sure that every penny gets spent the way she would want it's meant he loves it he's the worst eater and he loves it and he's healthy that's the problem he's healthy so you know i said to him once i said what if your doctor told you had to start eating only lettuce or you would die he said well then i would eat only lettuce but i'm not going to do it now you know he has like perfect everything and he eats the worst possible i mean it drives you know he doesn't drink water he doesn't drink water he doesn't do anything he's supposed to do and he's healthy charlie had been working on some sort of large thing about my dad and um he had wanted to talk to my mother and my mother sort of went back and forth because she just didn't like to talk to anyone so she finally agreed because it was charlie and she trusted him and she figured he would be good to her so she was going to do it she would do it and thank god she did um so we charlie set it up in a room in the plaza so she wouldn't have to do anything because she was really not so good at this point still um we sort of did this thing where we'd think one thing a day what are you gonna do for you know because she was so tired still from the radiation um so she that morning actually had said i don't know if i can do this and charlie knew this might happen and uh was fine with whatever worked and so uh she said i'll try she said maybe i'll just do it for 10 minutes i just feel tired and i'll do it for 10 minutes i said okay so we'll go down there and we'll tell charlie you know you'll do what you do and uh so we went down there and she um started the interview with him and i think it's 45 minutes long about she didn't cough she didn't have to drink her water she was completely amazing i think and i'm so grateful now that she did it because it's the only thing we have but she was fabulous and so we were leaving and walking down the hall and she said how'd i do and i said honey you were great you know couldn't be better she said are you sure you know i didn't make any mistakes i said no i said you're going to be totally happy with it it was fabulous and she said let's go to bergdorf's so we did we went to bergdahl's where she sat in a chair but she was still at bergdarf's i think he would want it to be uh about him his character and uh who he is as a person um i don't think he would necessarily want it to be that he was you know the second richest guy or whatever he is i think he would want it to be about his character and who he is and and even though i i don't think of him as a philanthropist because he doesn't personally give away the money except he gives away all the money to other people to give it to i think that would be the other piece of it is that you know with all that money he did make he made sure it went out to do as much good as it could do in the world um and not to sit and you know pay for 25 boats and 16 houses and he just doesn't care about that he cares that it goes it goes out to do a lot of good i think he would hope that his legacy had to do with his character and who he is as a person rather than how much money he made well we bought the house we my parents bought the house in 1971. i was a senior in high school so um and it was a little bit of a haven i think for my mother to kind of go escape and sit and look at the ocean and um she really was very very connected to that house um my dad you know doesn't get connected to anything like that um he was he liked being out there because we were all out there and i think that was fun for him and you know he liked just hanging around out there uh but he has no real sentimental connection to it and i think actually it would be painful for him now to be there because it was it just was so her how he wrote me a letter after he went there after she died and he said i don't think i can come back again it's it's just too painful i don't feel that way um i like it that it feels like her um but you know everybody's different that way so um uh it's it's a very uh you know it's just a special place and it's it's right by the ocean and it's beautiful and it's open and it just feels uh feels like her when and some of my friends have stayed there and said i like going there because it reminds me of your mom

Channel: Life Stories

Views: 31,173

Keywords: Susie Buffett, Susie Buffett Interview, Warren Buffett, warren buffett interview, warren buffett advice, warren buffett 2023, warren buffett investment strategy, warren buffett speech, warren buffett portfolio, warren buffett investing, warren buffett stocks, warren buffett motivation, warren buffett real estate, warren buffett financial advice, warren buffett berkshire, warren buffett cnbc, Warren buffett america's incredible days are over

Id: LgHUHYgROTU

Length: 57min 10sec (3430 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021