Few got to know Jack Bogle over the years as well as Steve Galbraith, an investment manager and former strategist at Morgan Stanley.
Galbraith accompanied Bogle—who died on Wednesday at the age of 89—and some of his family to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2017 when Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett praised him.
“Jack Bogle has done probably more for the American investor than any man in the country,” Buffett said, and asked Bogle to stand up from his seat.
“It was like going to a Rolling Stones concert but I was escorting around Bono—hundreds of people wanting selfies with Jack—he was really ebullient and so honored to be called out,” Galbraith recalled in an email to Barron’s. Galbraith runs an investment management firm, Kindred Capital Advisors, in Darien, Conn.
Galbraith got to know Bogle more than 20 years ago, when Galbraith was an analyst at Bernstein and wrote a long report on the asset-management industry. “I emailed him out of the blue. I didn’t expect him to respond; respond he did. He called and he had a voice—it was the voice of God—rich, resonant.”
The two also served on the board of the National Constitution Center, established by Congress to “disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a nonpartisan basis in order to increase the awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.” The center wanted to build a boardroom in Bogle’s name. But when it came to donations for the room, “almost no one from Wall Street” contributed while “many from Main Street would give,” Galbraith wrote to Barron’s.
The boardroom situation illustrates that many on Wall Street weren’t necessarily crazy about Bogle, because his championing of low-fee index funds threatened active investment management. But many individual investors saw him as a hero.
Galbraith said he used to visit Bogle and his “wonderful family” at a compound in Lake Placid, N.Y. “It was straight out of Norman Rockwell,” Galbraith wrote. “His wife Eve is grace defined—so kind.”
Galbraith also taught a class at Columbia Business School for a decade, and Bogle was a guest lecturer every year. “The students loved him. So smart, such integrity,” Galbraith said. Bogle also praised Galbraith, saying he treasured “the friendship and mutual admiration that I’ve shared with Warren Buffett and Steve Galbraith, men of integrity, wisdom and class.”
“He was my best friend on Wall Street,” Galbraith wrote. “I’ll really miss him.”
Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com
