“There’s no question the money I give away does a lot of good but Doris is giving time, and time is the scarcest commodity,” Warren Buffett told the Globe. “No matter who you are, you have 24 hours a day, and when you give time up you’re giving up something important. So if you were keeping a scorecard in life, you’d give her a higher score than me.”
‘Mary Sunshine’
Doris Buffett was born Feb. 12, 1928, in Omaha, where her father, Howard Buffett, was a stockbroker, according to “Giving It All Away,” a 2010 biography. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1942 while her mother, the former Leila Stahl, was a homemaker. Her childhood nickname was “Mary Sunshine.”
In addition to her brother Warren, she had a sister, Roberta, known as “Bertie,” who also became a philanthropist, donating more than $100 million to Northwestern University in 2015.
Doris Buffett attended George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., where the family moved after her father was elected to Congress. In 1951, she married Truman Stevens Wood with whom she had three children: Marshall, Robin and Sydney. The union ended in divorce as did her three subsequent marriages.
“None of my husbands had a sense of humor,” she said.
After becoming wealthy from an an investment she made with her brother in the 1950s she lost her entire fortune, more than $12 million, in the October 1987 stock market crash. She came into wealth again in 1996 when her mother died, leaving her shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock.
“My payoff is the constant joy that I have thinking that somebody’s life is a little better,” Buffett said. “That for once in their life they have good luck, not bad luck.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.