September 9, 2010
What: Book signing by Doris Buffett
When: Saturday, 2-5 p.m.
Where: Fredericksburg Area Museum store
Cost: Free Info: famcc.org or 540/371-3037, ext. 12
What: Doris Buffett will be interviewed about her life by author Michael Zitz, and will sign copies of Zitz’s biography of her, “Giving It All Away.”
When: 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12
Where: Stafford Borders Books & Music, 1240 Stafford Market Place in Garrisonville
Info: 540/720-9636
BY MEGAN WILLIAMS
FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR
Does money buy happiness? Doris Buffett would answer yes, but with one caveat: only if it’s used to help others.
And the Fredericksburg-area resident should know. Giving away her inherited fortune for the last 14 years has bought her the most joy she has known in her life.
“When you know you’ve been able to change somebody’s life for the better, or get someone the help they need, you can wake up every morning feeling good about that,” Buffett told Weekender. “I’d say that buys a whole lot of happiness if used that way.”
As a “retail” philanthro-pist, Buffett is in the business of helping people one-on-one through the Sunshine Lady Foundation, which she began in 1996.
Since then, the foundation has been able to award more than $100 million in grants.
Buffett will be at the Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center on Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m. to sign copies of the book “Giving It All Away: The Doris Buffett Story,” and to talk with people about her life and the work she has done.
Her visit to the museum will be part of a quiet kickoff of a two-year membership drive and outreach effort by the museum.
“We saw a connection between what Ms. Buffett is doing and what the museum would like to do in the next few years, in relation to outreach in the community,” said Ellen Killough, the museum’s president and CEO.
Of course the museum’s vehicle for community outreach will differ from Buffett’s, Killough said, although the goal is the same.
Killough was introduced to the Sunshine Lady by museum board member Jane Wallace, who earlier this year had asked Buffett to speak to her company, Remax Bravo, about community outreach.
Wallace found Buffett’s message pertinent to the museum’s goals, and pitched the idea to Killough of asking her to do a book signing.
“Whether you are Obama or Glenn Beck, Bono or Doris, or us here in the museum, we’re all agents of change–and bottom line is we have to reach out to people in our community,” Wallace said.
“Hopefully it’ll have a domino effect where people in the world reach out and bring art and culture and giving around the world.”
This, too, is dwhat Buffett hopes to see more of in the Fredericksburg community and in towns and cities across the county. And it can begin, she said, with mentoring a child or finding a cause within your neighborhood to help with or donate money to.
“Hopefully I can get a few people to go home and think they’re going to do something. That’d be great,” Buffett said. “There is plenty of room for this in Fredericksburg. It’s called creating a community, a real community.
“No matter where you live, you can do something like that.”
Hearing how she has inspired other people to action, Buffett said, is the best thing she could have hoped for with the release of the book.
She has been taking her message of helping others to cities and towns across the state through book signings and Q-and-A sessions.
Because, as she would know, inspiration is free.
Despite a difficult childhood, and an equally difficult adulthood filled with unhappy marriages, Buffett says she’s not complaining–what she has gotten to do in the past decade and a half has made it worth it.
“Most people assume that I have had some kind of glorious, perfect life,” Buffett said with a sarcastic laugh. “But I have this marvelous opportunity to do what I was meant to do, to be who I was meant to be.
“And I’m hanging in there, doing the best that I can, pedaling as furiously as I can, and I’m having a lot of fun doing it, too.”
Most of her happiness in life has come from helping people, but the opportunity to tell her story has also changed her life.
“Giving It All Away,” written by Michael Zitz, a Free Lance-Star reporter, has given her the opportunity to shed light on her own misfortunes, and to inspire people who may likewise be experiencing difficulties in their lives.
“She’s happier than she’s ever been in her entire life,” Zitz said. “She really loves Fredericksburg, and she really wants people here to understand her and like her, and now every time she walks down the street, everyone has a smile on their face because they recognize her and her story now.”
For Buffett, the biggest surprise since the release of the book has been the number of letters she receives from people telling her their stories.
“People who had problems in their childhood, with a parent or something, they seem to be happy to find that someone has had the same problems and it hasn’t done them in,” Buffett said. “And they hope that we can meet and have lunch. And we will.”
Megan Williams is a Fredericksburg writer.
What: Book signing by Doris Buffett
When: Saturday, 2-5 p.m.
Where: Fredericksburg Area Museum store
Cost: Free Info: famcc.org or 540/371-3037, ext. 12
What: Doris Buffett will be interviewed about her life by author Michael Zitz, and will sign copies of Zitz’s biography of her, “Giving It All Away.”
When: 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12
Where: Stafford Borders Books & Music, 1240 Stafford Market Place in Garrisonville
Info: 540/720-9636
Link to article here