In the short span of eight days, three famous centenarians passed away – the spectacularly successful investing whiz Charlie Munger on November 28, world-famous geostrategic thinker Henry Kissinger one day later, and the legendary TV producer Norman Lear a week after that. OK, I admit that I’m fudging the definition of “centenarian” a wee bit. Mr. Munger died a mere five weeks before his 100th birthday, but Mr. Kissinger was 100-1/2 at his passing and Mr. Lear 101, so between the three of them, they accounted for more than 300 years of life on Earth.
A personal note: It’s still hard for me to get my head around the idea that more and more people are having lives spanning a century. In all my years, I still have known only one centenarian—dear Mary Sennholz, one of the grand ladies in the history of Grove City College. It certainly struck me as highly unusual when three famous, immensely successful individuals who have reached (or nearly reached) that milestone passed on so close together.
The careers of these three men were as impressive as their longevity.
Charlie Munger will long be remembered in the investing community as Warren Buffett’s indispensable sidekick in managing their corporation, Berkshire Hathaway. (For those who don’t know, Berkshire Hathaway is in the business of buying other businesses, sometimes in toto, such as See’s Candies, and often partially, e.g., shares of Coca-Cola, Apple, etc.) Although Mr. Buffett always has gotten most of the attention and public adulation from shareholders grateful for their outsized gains over the decades, much of Berkshire’s success can be attributed to Munger’s down-to-earth wisdom about buying good companies with strong brands at favorable prices.
In the 1980s, I played tennis with a stockbroker who told me that his main retirement plan was to buy one share of Berkshire Hathaway every year. Back then, a share cost around $3,000. That seemed too rich for me. Bad mistake! Today, that same share sells for $540,000. Any honest investor will tell you that investing isn’t easy, and it isn’t, or there would be many more stock millionaires. The fact is that Charlie Munger had a rare genius for recognizing value and letting time grow that value.
Henry Kissinger’s genius was in being able to acquire and synthesize vast stores of knowledge, whether knowledge of history, geography, ideologies, or people. My colleague, Paul Kengor, has written a fine summation of Kissinger’s long, amazing life. I would just add that for a person who never held elective office to have had the ear of so many powerful leaders, both in America, whether Democrats or Republicans, and around the world, is remarkably impressive (although whether his counsels and strategies were more positive than negative remains fiercely debated). And the fact that he co-wrote a deeply thoughtful article about the potential ramifications of AI (artificial intelligence) earlier this year demonstrated that his mind continued to function as brilliantly as ever despite his age.
Norman Lear’s great talent was to make us both laugh and think. He was the George Bernard Shaw of his generation. We baby-boomers were still young when Lear unveiled “All in the Family” in 1971. It was a folksy satire that managed to elicit hearty laughter, even as it lampooned various human weaknesses. The Bunker household—patriarch Archie, a tradition-bound, patriotic cab driver who was constantly bewildered by all the social changes going on around him, his wife Edith, who, in those early days of women’s liberation remained meekly deferential to the husband she loved EXCEPT when Archie went too far, and daughter Gloria and her liberal husband Mike—represented in microcosm the differing social values and currents running through American society in the 1970s. The tensions and stresses of traditional views and values being challenged in a convulsive present and charging toward an unfamiliar future created abundant opportunities for comic moments. Against that backdrop, Norman Lear, so clearly tuned in to those social currents, gave us a cultural masterpiece.
The common ingredient shared by Charlie Munger, Henry Kissinger, and Norman Lear was their keen insight into human nature and a corresponding wisdom about how the world works. That gave each of them the wisdom to excel in their chosen fields: investing, geopolitical statecraft, and entertainment.
I am tempted to say here that it will be a long time before three such talented individuals pass on so close to each other in time, but I’m not so sure. There are many gifted, talented individuals making their mark. What an extraordinary variety of human gifts, skills, and accomplishments we have in this world of ours. I wonder how many of us fully appreciate the amazing range of human brilliance that exists. It’s really quite dazzling when you think about it.
