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"Among us not many great, not many mighty, but most belonging to
the reliable `middle class,' the strength of a nation," wrote a Munger family historian. "Some few have cast considerable luster on the family name.
Among these I class the sturdy pioneer, those who fought in the Colonial
Wars, the Revolution, and in the War for the Union, aren't they worthy?"3

One of these Nebraska Mungers became a teacher and married a
school marm. Teachers earned a pittance in the early days of this country
and the family was extremely poor. Nonetheless, one of their two sons became a doctor and the other, Charlie's grandfather, became a lawyer and
later a judge.

Charlie's grandfather, judge T.C. Munger, was influenced all his life
by his early poverty. He would frequently recall being sent to the butcher
with a nickel to buy the parts of the animal others would not eat. He had
to leave college after one year for lack of funds and thereafter educated
himself, using books and self-discipline. Even so, he rose to a position of
influence, all the while holding to the beliefs and characteristics of his
pioneer forbears. Judge Munger was determined to move the family as far
as possible from the hard-scrabble life his parents had experienced. "He
wanted not to be poor," recalled Charlie. "Self-sufficiency and hard work
would be his salvation. My grandparents thought Robinson Crusoe was a
great moral work. They forced their children to react it, and my grandmother read it to me. That generation admired the conquering of nature
through discipline."

Molly Munger, who takes a great interest in family lore, explained that
"Judge was anti-gambling, anti-saloon. Financially conservative. Underspending his income. Making money by lending money to the good German farmer, the good German butcher. As a judge he was a progressive. It
was a big deal to be a federal judge. There weren't many back then."

Indeed, in 1907 Judge Munger's name made a headline in the Lincoln
newspaper. "Bar president takes train to D.C. to visit President." In 1939,
the Omaha World Herald printed a feature article about judge Munger, who
was celebrating both the fifty-fourth anniversary of his admission to the
bar and the beginning of his thirty-third year as a United States District
judge. Judge Munger, who was 77 at the time the article was published,
was then the second-oldest federal judge in service. He was appointed to
the bench in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt, after having served in
the state legislature and as county attorney of Lancaster County.

"Back in the harness after a vacation in Mexico, Judge Munger is not
unduly elated by this anniversary, and is digging into his work as usual.
The routine cases he ordinarily hears will be interrupted with a more
exciting job when he goes to Hastings to preside in a kidnaping trial
Monday."4

According to the Omaha World-Herald, "He firmly believes that
work is the best way to keep young." His bright blue eyes snap when he
says, "I call myself a member of the present generation because I feel that
way, and let it go at that."5

Among Judge Munger's most memorable cases was a train robbery that
took place west of Omaha shortly after he took the bench and the prosecution of a group of Nebraskans accused of staking fraudulent homesteads.

"He has a reputation for giving juries more thorough instructions
than any other judge in the middle west." the writer noted'

Certainly the standards were high in the Munger and Russell families-Charlie's two sets of grandparents. The Mungers were Presbyterians
and pillars of the church; the Russells were New England style Emersonian Unitarians and a little more irregular in church attendance.

Carol Estabrook says that despite Toody Munger's free-thinking family
history, she tried to instill religion in her children. "We were brought up
under strict ethical standards, in the Unitarian Church. Dad seldom went.
Mother dragged us until we wouldn't go any more." "Ultimately," said
Estabrook, "our ethical training came from our parents, our grandfather."

"I had four aunts, my only blood aunts, every single one a Phi Beta
Kappa," explained Charlie. "On my mother's side the religion was that of
New England style intellectuals, but their religious organization is now a
left-wing political movement and the Russell descendants are Unitarians
no more."

The Washington Post's Katharine Graham said she once received a
letter from Charlie in which he told about the moral rectitude of his Aunt
"Oofie," his father's older sister. "Oofie" was taught by her father, the
judge, never to flinch and always do her duty well. Indeed, she became
"Oofie" instead of "Ruth" because at a young age she mastered the delivery of long and complex bedtime prayers. After hearing these prayers, her
younger brother Al, who had trouble pronouncing consonants, would
then say "Dear God, mine's just like Oofie's."

As an adult, Aunt Oofie was so dutiful that after her husband died,
she viewed his autopsy.

Her nephew Charlie adored Oofie, partly because her standards were
so extreme that she amused him. But even Charlie was floored by Oofie's
reaction to .judge Munger's sudden death at age 80. just before he died,
Oofie noticed that her father had made a mistake in arithmetic. She said to
Charlie: "It was God's grace to take judge, knowing he wouldn't have
wanted to stay on and make errors."

From the Russells and the Mungers, Charlie inherited both intellectual and physical hardiness. In addition to the judge's longevity, Charlie's
great-grandfather on his mother's side lived to age 87 and his wife lived to
be 82.

Florence Russell Munger's maternal grandparents, the Inghams, were
among the first citizens of Algona, Iowa. Captain Ingham brought his young wife to Iowa, and the couple lived at first in a "sodhouse," which
was nothing more than a cave. The captain loved to relate stories about
his pioneer days, whereas his wife would only say: "They were mean,
hard days and I don't like to think about them."

Much later, Captain Ingham came to operate the most prosperous
bank in Algona and accumulated tracts of farm land. He became affluent
enough so that when the industrialist Andrew Carnegie offered to pay
half the cost of a town library, Ingham, at the insistence of his wife, put
up the other half.

A fisherman, his 150-pound tarpon was carefully preserved by a taxidermist and hung in the basement of Algona's library, no doubt, a condition
of his gift. He also had been a dedicated hunter, but when lie accidentally
killed his beloved hunting dog Frank, he gave up hunting forever.

"A strong personality," said Charlie. "He'd fought in the Indian wars,
thus becoming Captain Ingham. Every year the cousins used to come to
Algona-his many grandchildren and live there, a lot like Star Island.
Mother and her sisters came. They staved and lived in his house all summer, year after year."

Captain Ingham impressed his grandchildren by rapidly making
"magic squares," wherein all straight lines of big numbers added to the
same sum, no matter what the direction of the line. Captain Ingham
shared this mathematical addiction with Benjamin Franklin and said he
made the squares "to rest my mind."

Captain Ingham's son Harvey became it crusading newspaper editor
and a meticulous recorder of family history. Toody Munger was particularly fond of one sentence in her Uncle Harvey's description of the
Inghams: "There was plenty of plain living and high thinking in the
old house."

Nellie Ingham, one of Captain Ingham's daughters married Charlie
Russell. She was Charlie's grandmother.

Toody Russell's' family had been affluent much longer than the
Mungers had been, and yet they were politically left of the Mungers. They
called themselves "Wilsonian Democrats." The Inghams side of the family
originally came from the Seneca Falls area of New York state which was
famous for it's early anti-slavery, pro-women's suffrage attitudes, and the
Inghams pushed similar ideas in Iowa. Despite the Mungers' more conservative ways, they respected Toody's family.

"Toddy was the real deal," said Molly Munger. "They thought she was
an elegant girl from a lovely family. Beautiful, very funny, smart in a
quick, witty way. A happy person who laughed it lot. Educated at Smith
College, she had a college-educated great uncle at the time of the Civil War. Her grandmother's mother, Caroline Rice, had a prosperous life in
upstate New York. She was connected. She grew up in a mansion. Horse
and carriage, long clothes. Very unlike the Mungers."

In turn, body 's family approved of her choice of a husband. When
pretty, charming Florence announced that she would be marrying Al
Munger, who stood 5 feet, 5' inches tall and wore thick glasses, her
grandmother Russell observed, "Whoever would have thought she had
the sense?"

For years after his father died, Charlie carried Al Munger's briefcase
to work. He had it engraved "Alfred C. Munger 1891-1959. Charles T.
Munger 1924-." He no doubt liked the briefcase, but it also served as
homage to a loyal and supportive father. Although Al Munger was by any
measure a successful and respected attorney, "I think it's fair to say Al
never achieved the height his son did," said Molly. "His greatest achievement was Charlie-a prodigy-a lively, energetic, funny little boy.
Grampa Al just threw himself into his son. He adored him and they were
very close. My father sort of wore my grandfather's colors. My father was
very anxious to make his father proud of him."

"Al Munger," said Charlie, "was one of the happiest men who ever
lived and achieved exactly what he wished to achieve, no more or less. He
faced all troubles with less fuss than either his father or his son, each of
whom spent considerable time foreseeing troubles that never happened.
He had exactly the marriage and family life that was his highest hope. He
had pals he loved and who loved him, including one-in-ten-thousand types
like Ed Davis and Grant McFayden. He owned the best hunting dog in
Nebraska, which meant a lot to him. I don't see my father as less successful in the sense that really matters. He was just differently aimed and
lived in a time when lawyers made less money."

Warren Buffett said that Al and Charlie had none of the tension or
jealousy that sometimes muddies a father-son relationship. "Charlie once
said that if he'd come home at midnight and said, `Dad, you've got to help
me bury this body in the basement,' his father would have gotten up and
helped him bury the body. Then the next morning, he would have gone to
work on convincing Charlie he'd done something wrong."

Al Munger always took an interest in his son's hobbies. Then, as
Charlie would outgrow them, or lose interest, or go on to some new stage
in life, his father would carry the hobbies on. Al subscribed to the American Rifleman magazine until his death because Charlie had first subscribed when he was captain of his high school rifle team. Charlie had
joined the rifle team because it seemed the only way he could earn a sports
letter. "I hoped to impress the girls with my sports letter, prominently worn on my sweater," said Charlie. "And I did turn heads, but the reason
was the girls wondered how a spindly little guy like me could have won a
sports letter."

Long before his son took up shooting, Al Munger was a fisherman
and duck hunter. "He loved everything about the out-of-doors," noted
Charlie. "To him, heaven was finding a farmstand."

Al liked catfish and would often drive into the predominantly black
neighborhood of Omaha where people kept concrete tanks full of live catfish in their basements.

"You picked out what you wanted," recalled Charlie. "My father also
loved ethnic shops, bakeries. He had a special butcher he went to."

Though he could not be described as a lavish spender, Al Munger savored just the perfect thing, whatever it was he needed. Al had learned
the joy of artful living from his mother. She shopped for the very best coffee beans, then took great pleasure each morning in grinding them for
fresh coffee. It was a Tao philosophy, Midwestern style. In the Tao Te
Ching, Lao-Tse urged seekers to regard the small as important and to make
much of the little. "The little obsessions," Charlie called them.

WHEN AL ANU Toooy MUNGER WERE FIRST MARRIED, they lived in a home
on the North side of Dodge Avenue just a block from Toody's parents.
Charlie's father built the little house at 420 41st Street in 1925. A few
years later, after the Russells passed away, the Mungers moved to the
South side of Dodge Avenue, a long, broad thoroughfare that splits
Omaha in two and today is lined by miles of shopping centers. Their
next home was at 105 South 55th Street, a double-gabled brick house
in the Happy Hollow, University of Nebraska area not far from where
Buffett lives today. This is a neighborhood notable for its mature trees,
and today, its older homes. In the spring, trails of crocus, tulips, and daffodils rim the sidewalks and driveways and bring patches of purple, yellow, and red to lawns awakening from winter dormancy.

At the time they moved to the 55th Street house, which they purchased from Omaha pioneer Peter Kiewit, the home was on the western
fringe of town. Yet Omaha was small enough that, despite its expanding
borders and the cultural and ethnic mix, most people felt part of a single
community.

"In my early boyhood, we lived around Germans in Omaha and there
were several German language newspapers. Omaha was very ethnic,"
Munger recalled. "It was not like the Latinos do today-[back then] they
assimilated. There was a big Italian neighborhood, Irish, Bohemians, a packing house district. A lot of pronounced ethnicity. It was a very good
town to grow up in, and a good time. There were better behavior standards in school and everywhere else."

Carol Estabrook agreed, somewhat.

"In the early days in Omaha, there was a sense of stability, belonging,
you were comfortable, but terribly insular," she said. "We were way too
unaware of things we should have been more aware of. It was the center
of our universe."