Howard Homan Buffett

Howard Homan Buffett (August 13, 1903 – April 30, 1964) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He was a four-term Republican United States representative for the state of Nebraska. He was the father of Warren Buffett, the businessman and investor.

Early life Howard Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Henrietta Duvall Buffett and Ernest P. Buffett, owners of a grocery business. Ernest P. Buffett's parents were second cousins, both having mainly English descent. The Buffet surname (renamed to Buffett) originates in France with a Huguenot weaver, named John Buffett, who became Buffett's first American Buffett ancestor when he emigrated to New York in the late-1600s.

Howard Buffett attended public schools and graduated from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1925. While a student, Buffett was a brother of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. He married Leila Stahl on December 27, 1925. The Buffetts were active members of the Dundee Presbyterian Church. After failing to secure a job in the family grocery business, he started a small stock brokerage firm.

Career Entering the investment business, Buffett also served on the Omaha board of education from 1939 to 1942. In 1942 he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Nebraska district in which Omaha was located. In that election, Buffett was seen as "a Republican sacrificial lamb in Nebraska's second district when FDR was a popular wartime leader." Nevertheless, he went on to win the Republican nomination in the primary and then the subsequent general election.

He was reelected twice. In 1948 he again was the Republican nominee for another term, but was defeated for reelection; however, he was the Republican nominee for the office again in 1950 and won the office back. In 1952 Buffett decided against seeking another term and returned to his investment business in Omaha, Buffett-Falk & Co., in which he worked until shortly before his death. He also served as the campaign manager for conservative Senator Robert A. Taft in Taft's 1952 presidential campaign. He "would invariably draw 'zero' ratings from the Americans for Democratic Action and other leftist groups."

Buffett was a vocal critic of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Buffett was also "one of the major voices in Congress opposed to the Korean adventure," The CIA failed to predict the Marxist invasion of the Republic of Korea in 1950, just as it had failed to predict the Soviet Atomic Bomb the previous year, it was these intelligence failures that Rear Admiral Hillenkoetter testified about.

Speaking on the floor of Congress, he opposed military interventionism:

In the summer of 1962, he wrote "an impassioned plea... for the abolition of the draft" in the New Individualist Review. Buffett wrote:

When the American government conscripts a boy to go 10,000 miles to the jungles of Asia without a declaration of war by Congress (as required by the Constitution) what freedom is safe at home? Surely, profits of U.S. Steel or your private property are not more sacred than a young man's right to life. Howard Buffett strongly supported the gold standard because he believed it would limit the ability of government to inflate the money supply and spend beyond its means. His son Warren Buffett is not an advocate of the gold standard.

Personal life Buffett married Leila Stahl Buffett (March 18, 1904 – August 30, 1996). Together, they had three children, one son and two daughters:

Doris Buffett (1928–2020), a philanthropist who was married four times. Warren Buffett (b. 1930), a businessman, investor, and philanthropist, Chairman & former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Roberta "Bertie" Buffett (b. 1933), a philanthropist who has been married three times; first to Charlie Snorf in 1955, then to Dr. Hilton Bialek. Upon his death in 2002, she married David Elliott, in 2007. He died in 2017.

Howard Buffett died on May 30, 1964, at the age of 60, from cancer.

Publications Buffett, Howard Homan. Human Freedom Rests on Gold Redeemable Money , Financial Chronicle 5/6/48 Buffett, Howard Homan. The Evil Men in the Kremlin Must Be Chortling as Militarism Runs Wild in America. Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952.