It is with great sorrow that we note the passing of a living legend and celebrate the life of an extraordinary man - Philip L. Carret. Although he died at the age of 101, which many would consider to be a ripe old age, he was as young at heart, vital and as active to the last as anyone we know.

     Born November 29, 1896, he was a remarkable man in lots of ways: That he had a fabulous mind for investing - what he called "a money mind" - was well known. Among his many admirers, of course, was Warren Buffett who as recently as Berkshire Hathaway's most recent annual meeting said, "Phil's a hero of mine."

     Carret began managing money for family and friends in 1924 while a reporter and feature writer for Barron's. He went on to establish what evolved into the Pioneer Fund in 1928. David Tripple, the chief investment officer of the Pioneer Group, echoing the sentiments of so many others, recently described Carret as "a wonderful person ... with a real passion for investing." He added: "In 101 years, I don't think he ever once got sucked up into a fad or frenzy."

     In his book, A Money Mind at Ninety, Carret attributed his knack for investing, at least in part, to his having inherited (as the title implies) a "money mind." He relates how the first of his ancestors to demonstrate that talent that he knows of was his great grandfather in his capacity as the paymaster general (believe it or not) to Napoleon.

     As Carret notes, his son (and Phil's grandfather, Joseph) inherited the money mind, too. Born in 1797 and brought across the Atlantic Ocean by General Carret to the American wilderness around 1800, he sought (and found) his fortune in "the thriving little metropolis of New York City." In fact, so successful was Grandfather Joseph that within only 20 or so years, he achieved the wherewithal to buy a splendid sugar plantation in what is now Cuba "on which he spent the balance of his life." Carret describes, "In good years, the plantation yielded income on the order of $25,000 - a princely sum at the time."

     Carret mentions that although Grandmother Eliza left Joseph and Cuba "apparently with his consent" in 1850 taking her nine children with her to New England, remittances from the plantation enabled the family to live comfortably "as the nine children pursued their education."

     But as he recounts with characteristic candor, his father did not inherit the money mind. Thus, even though he graduated from Harvard Law School and built a successful law practice, with the death of his grandparents and the waning of Spanish influence in Cuba, "the annual payments of profit from the plantation ceased. Effectively, the estate was no longer a family asset."

     "A maiden aunt would occasionally talk of ... regaining possession of the property. [But] even at 16, I recognized such talk as wishful thinking. If I were ever to gain wealth, it would have to be by my own efforts."

     And Carret wasted little time in doing so. Apparently an overachiever early, as he describes, "I was dimly aware that there were other colleges such as Dartmouth and Yale, [but] it never occurred to me that I had any other choice - and Harvard it was." "[Fortunately,] the entrance exams," which he took at the tender age of 16, "were easy." So he entered Harvard College - still at the tender age of 16 - and graduated in only three years, "substituting one year at Harvard Business School for the normal senior year."