The Other Buffett
The Wall Street Journal, 8/3/07
Warren Buffett doesn’t give handouts. But you might try his sister Doris.
One day last July, UPS delivered a large cardboard box to the doorstep of a condominium in Rockport, Maine. Inside were more than 1,400 letters.
A New York state man wrote that he couldn’t afford a new glass eye. A woman from New Jersey talked about the strain of caring for a sister suffering from multiple sclerosis. A Florida woman described her efforts to regain custody of her three small children. The letters, which came from all over the world, had two things in common: All of them were pleas for money. And all were addressed to billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
Mr. Buffett, who lives in Omaha, Neb., had forwarded them to someone he knew he could trust to give them a fair hearing – his 79-year-old sister, Doris.
Read letters sent to Warren Buffett Last summer, after Mr. Buffett pledged shares now worth over $35 billion to the charity of his good friend Bill Gates, the pleas began pouring in. Since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on global health and education, doesn’t give money to individuals, Mr. Buffett began putting the letters aside for Doris, who runs a small foundation of her own. And to the great surprise of the people who’d written, Ms. Buffett began calling them.