B000U5KFIC EBOK (5 page)

When the fuss and flutter of his arrival at the Cass Lake retreat settles, Charlie goes to the only telephone in the house, which hangs on the
wall in the kitchen. There a gang of adult children (led by Sarah who is a
professional chef) is preparing dinner for the thirty family members and
friends on hand. A preteen granddaughter, Mary Margot, solemnly peels
carrots, alert for any mention of a fishing trip. Mary is smitten with fishing and is restless to check out the lake with her grandfather.

Charlie glances around the kitchen, as if calculating the odds of carrying on a reasonably private conversation with his pal and business partner, the second richest man in the world, the Sage of Securities, Warren
Buffett. Nancy Munger comes to her husband's rescue. "It's a walk-around
phone Charlie. Just take it wherever you want and dial the number." As if
unconvinced that the phone has enough range to work outside or from an
upstairs bedroom, Charlie goes just around the corner into the living
room and punches in the telephone number that he knows by heart. Pandemonium continues in the rest of the house as Charlie plops down in a
lumpy upholstered chair to chat with Warren.

"Mumble, mumble, mumble."

Silence.

"Mumble, mumble."

Silence.

"So it's the price that bothers you?" asks Charlie.

Silence.

"If you wait, I think you'll get your price."

Silence. "Okay." Click.

Though Charlie Munger's story begins in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 1, 1924, he clearly considers Star Island home. It is the place where
he has knotted a rope between his past, present, and future. The summer cottage has brought the family together during sad times, extremely
busy times, and especially later as the children grew up, scattered
around the world, and created families of their own. Charlie's grandparents vacationed there, his parents vacationed there, and over the years,
this collection of cabins on the small island in the middle of Cass
Lake, Minnesota, has become the family seat for Munger's eight children, fifteen grandchildren, and an assortment of aunts, uncles, nieces,
nephews, and cousins.

The Munger family that gathers at the island each summer is an amalgamation of his, hers, and theirs. Charlie has two daughters from his first
marriage-Molly and Wendy. His wife Nancy has two sons from her first marriage-Hal and David Borthwick. Charlie and Nancy have four
children together-Charles Jr., Emilie, Barry, and Philip. All are married
with children now, except Philip, who is a graduate student in New
York City.

We all think the island is central to the family," said Wendy Munger.
Star Island is the sort of community that is difficult to form in today's hectic urban centers. "If you've got a hole in the roof," said Wendy, "the
neighbors come help fix it. If your boat breaks down, they help. It's very
communal. There is a connection to your neighbors, a lot of sharing of
everything."

The island is a place of precious memories to the Munger children because their work-absorbed, ambitious father made a ritual of spending
time with them there each summer.

"That's where we saw the most of him," said Wendy.

The island is aptly named. Its shape resembles that of a star that has
fallen from the sky and splattered to earth. The dense evergreen forest
starts directly in back of the houses and the clear water of Cass Lake laps
up just 40 feet from the front door of Munger's eastern shore cottages.
Lake Windigo, a body of water completely contained within the island, is
less than a 15-minute hike from any of the cottages.

There are no roads on the island, and to get around, residents use a
system of hiking trails dividing uncut woods. The only way to reach Star
Island from the mainland is by private boat. Most of the island is now controlled by the U.S. Forest Service, but the longtime residents who own the
several dozen cottages perched along the edges, feel it is theirs.

Munger's grandparents discovered Star Island in 1932. Cass Lake was
a two-day drive from their home in Lincoln, Nebraska, but to the Mungers,
the trip into the Northern Minnesota wilderness was worth the effort.
They came upon the snug resort community in their desperation to escape the stifling 90-degree heat, 90 percent humidity that settles over Nebraska in the summers. Home air conditioning was almost unknown, and
any Midwesterner who could afford to do so fled to the cooler north.

After the solitary hotel on the island burned, the only accommodations left were an American-plan lodge (which later was acquired by the
U.S. Park Service and demolished) and a sprinkling of primitive cabins
around the shoreline. At first, the Munger family rented one of
the cabins. Charlie's grandparents were a stalwart couple. Federal Judge
Thomas C. Munger and his wife believed that roughing it with no electricity, no toilets, no telephones, no nearby stores, was good for their family. It built character. Electricity didn't come to the island until 1951 and
telephones weren't available until the 1980s.

"I think I was 13 when the bathroom went in," recalled Wendy
Munger. "Before that, we had outdoor toilets and a couple of sinks."

The original Munger cabin was built around 1908. Charlie's father
bought it in the 1940s from Dr. Tommy Thompson, a Lincoln orthopedist.
Dr. Thompson's droll comments on life still hang on some walls.

"My dad paid $5,600 for this house in 1946," explained Charlie. "My
grandmother had just died and he inherited some money. Before that he
didn't have anything extra."

An avid outdoorsman, Al Munger was delighted to own his own lake
house. But Charlie's mother Florence, always called Toody, had to muster
up her courage to make the annual trip to Minnesota.

"It was Dad's love. Father was a passionate fisherman, a duck hunter,
loved dogs," recalled Charlie's sister, Carol Estabrook. As for Toody, "She
was allergic. She was not an outdoor lady at all."

Although the short boat ride from the mainland marina to the
family dock was an ordeal for her, Toody Munger set the standard for all
grandmothers.

"Here was this woman who couldn't swim, and yet she came every
summer to an island out of love for her children and grandchildren," recalled Wendy. Once she was safely on the island, Toody Munger's sense of
humor returned.

"At Cass Lake," said Charlie's childhood friend Willa Davis Seemann,
"just before dinner we had to straighten things. `I want this cottage artistic by sunset,' Toody would say. She was clever and fun."

Allergies and insecurity on water weren't Toody's only problems
with the island. She was terrified of mice, and there were plenty of rodents to be found in a cabin in the woods that was unoccupied much of
the year. The Mungers have never been able to get rid of the mice completely, even though the house has been remodeled several times. Even at
home in Omaha, Toody Munger had to confront her aversion to rodents,
thanks to her only son, Charlie.

Charlie recalled that when he was a small boy, he and his mother
would go out walking together. One day he saw a dead rat by the side of
the road. "I'd already sensed her aversion to rodents, so I picked it up and
said, `Mother, what's this?' and waved it in front of her. She turned and
ran down the road and I ran after her, still holding the rat."

"It was the only time she took out after me with a coat hanger,"
Charlie said.

Later Charlie became enamored with raising hamsters in the basement. It was a popular hobby at the time, and Charlie began trading his pets with other hamster farmers, usually children like him. The Omaha
Cavy Club met downtown in the county courthouse, and Charlie was always riding off to meetings on his bicycle.

"The idea was getting a bigger buck, or a hamster with unusual coloration, or something like that," explained Munger. At one point he
owned about 35 hamsters and when one of them died, he wanted to keep
it in the refrigerator.

Carol Munger Estabrook said that her brother sometimes forgot to
feed the hamsters or would come home from school late. The little creatures "squeaked like crazy and could be heard all over the house. Finally
they got to smelling so bad mother made Charlie get rid of them."

Munger and his two sisters inherited the Minnesota cabin from their
parents, but Charlie's sister Mary, who has since died, sold her share to
buy her own island cabin down the beach. Now, Charlie, his wife Nancy,
and his surviving sister Carol, each own one-third of the property.

"We like the island life," observed Nancy Munger. "There are generations of people there. We're into the fifth and sixth generation of friends."

John Ruckmick, a Star Island neighbor who lives most of the year in
Evergreen, Colorado, has spent 72 summers on the island. His parents vacationed there in the late 1920s when his mother was pregnant with him,
and John started coming to Star Island the very next year. Ruckmick figures he was between five and seven years old when he first met Charlie.
The two boys played together when island families gathered for picnics.
"He exhibited his character early," said Ruckmick, laughing at the memory. "He was assertive!"

Returning to the island each year once he grew up was not easy for
Charlie, especially after he moved to California in the mid-1940s and
spent the next two decades raising a large family and trying to establish a
financial foothold.

"We started going to the island when I was around three or four," remembered Molly. "In the early days, sometimes we would fly to Omaha
and then drive up to the island. Wendy flew with my mother because she
was young enough to sit in my mother's lap. Once I went on a train with
Teddy and Daddy. It took a long time. I had red sandals."

When there was a little more cash, the family flew from California to
Minneapolis then got to the lake the best way they could figure out. "We
sure took some weird flights to save money," said Wendy. "We split up.
The older kids went on a Greyhound bus. It was a dramatic sign that times
had changed when we all started to fly from Minneapolis to Bemidji-a
big shift."

To Charles Munger, Jr., summers at the lake were a time when the
family had their father's full attention. "Up here we went fishing. We
were always making fires. The rest of the year we didn't see him much."

Now, said Wendy, "we all try to be there together, usually seven of
the eight children, or at least six of the eight. It is crucial to our wellbeing," "We all want to be there at the exact same week. We had to buy
up property on the shore to make room."

When the Munger clan gathers there in late July or in August, there
can be nearly three dozen people living in the assortment of Munger
cottages. Because it is difficult to store enough food for that many people in the small kitchens, the Munger children take turns boating across
Cass Lake for daily shopping excursions. The food bill invariably runs
more than $300 per day. The family takes delight in finding fresh lake
fish or a reliable supply of locally-harvested wild rice, or in bringing
home 100 ears of fresh corn, bought from a farm truck parked along the
road.

As nearby cottages came up for sale, Charlie bought them-starting
with the house dubbed "Munger West." Later third and fourth cottages
farther along the shore were acquired. In 1999, the Munger children communicated by telephone, fax, and e-mail to plan, build, and furnish a
"great room," which allows family and friends to gather in one place for
meals and games.

The original main house, "Munger East," has doubled in size since
Charlie's father bought it. A guest house equipped for use by a disabled
person later was built with ramps and other devices to accommodate
Charlie's sister Mary, who in the late 1980s succumbed to Parkinson's disease. Eventually a boathouse with an apartment over the top was added,
then a tennis court, and in 1999, a more substantial dock that Charlie designed himself.

A sign over the front door of the main house reads "Anglers' Rest," a
name taken from one of Charlie's favorite books by P.G. Wodehouse,
demonstrating Charlie's devotion to both Wodehouse and fishing. Before
the house was remodeled, the upstairs walls, more partitions than anything, didn't go all the way to the ceiling. Molly lay in bed at night
hearing her father in his own bedroom chuckling as he read stories about
Wodehouse's zany character, Bertie Wooster.

The Mungers may be on vacation at Star Island, but they don't forget
the companies that made all this comfort possible. Much of the furniture
that wasn't originally in the cabins was purchased from a Berkshireowned furniture store in Omaha, The Nebraska Furniture Mart, and
shipped to the lake. It was floated out to the island on a barge owned by Munger. Gillette toiletries are stocked in the bathrooms and the refrigerators are loaded with Coca-Cola, both companies in which Berkshire has
substantial ownership.

With the extra cottages came more docks and boats. There are now
thirteen boats, including fishing dinghies, two Mark Twains, a Stingray,
and a catamaran sailboat. The Star Island boats, said Molly Munger, are a
constant source of vexation, since family members live thousands of miles
away most of the year and the boats are untended and in "various stages
of disrepair."

The upkeep on the houses is especially daunting, since Charlie and
Nancy also own homes in the Hancock Park district of Los Angeles, in Santa
Barbara, Newport Beach (California), and in Hawaii. A local businesswoman, Ann Cramer, has for 25 years supervised the Munger property
in Minnesota, taking a hand in overseeing what seems like never-ending
construction and remodeling projects.

For Charlie, the childhood memories are essential to who he is, but
even without the memories, he might keep coming back for the fishing.
By any measure, Munger is a fervent and determined angler.

"Charlie would fish in a rain barrel," said King Williams, a friend of
Munger's who is captain of a huge sailboat that Munger built and keeps in
Santa Barbara.