Fortune met Warren Buffett by accident in 1966. I was writing an investing article about another man, Alfred Winslow Jones, who wasn’t famous at that moment, but was about to be because of the article. Jones was running something called a hedge fund, and Fortune’s description of what that was and how Jones operated started a miniboom in the hedge fund business. Buffett Partnership Ltd. -- a sort of competitor of Jones’s fund -- got a single line in the article. To my everlasting dismay, I misspelled Buffett, giving it only one “t.”
A bit later, my husband, John Loomis, met Buffett and came home saying, “I think I have just met the smartest investor in the country.” I’m sure my eyes rolled. But then I, too, got to know Warren (and his wonderful late first wife, Susie) and realized how impressive this largely unknown fellow was. The Loomises bought stock in his small company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA); we became good friends of the Buffetts; and ultimately I became the pro bono editor of his increasingly famous annual letter to shareholders.
