Quicknation    Charles Schulz

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(November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) was a 20th-century American cartoonist best known worldwide for his i

Schulz was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Dena and Carl Schulz. His nickname, "Sparky", was given by his uncle, after the horse Spark Plug in the i comic strip.

He attended St. Paul's Richard Gordon Elementary School, where he skipped two half-grades. As a result, he was the youngest in his class when he attended St. Paul Central High years later, which may have been the reason why he was so shy and isolated as a young teenager. After his mother died in February, 1943, he was drafted into the army and sent to Camp Campbell in Kentucky. He was then shipped to Europe two years later to fight in World War II as an infantry squad leader with the U.S. 20th Armored Division. After leaving the United States Army in 1945, he took a job as an art teacher at Art Instruction Inc., from which he had taken correspondence courses before he was drafted.

His drawings were first published by Robert Ripley in his i; it was in this strip that Charlie Brown first appeared, as well as a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz also sold a cartoon to the i syndicated, through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. i was dropped in 1949, and in 1950 Schulz approached the United Features Syndicate with his best strips from i made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. This strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called iSchulz also had a dog when he was a boy. Unlike Snoopy, Schulz's dog Spike was a pointer. Eventually, it was revealed that Snoopy had a desert-dwelling brother... named Spike.Schulz's "Little Red-Haired Girl" was Donna Johnson, an accountant at Art Instruction Inc., with whom he had a relationship. He asked her to marry him, but she refused. However, they remained friends for the rest of his life.Schulz's Patty character was modeled after his first wife. After their divorce she rarely appeared in the comic strip. However a different Patty - Peppermint Patty - appeared much more often.

Schulz moved briefly to Colorado Springs, Colorado. His family did not stay in Colorado for long, but Schulz did paint a wall for his daughter Meredith in that home, featuring Patty, Charlie Brown, and Snoopy. The wall was removed from the home in 2001 and donated to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. The restored artwork by Schulz is printed in the paperback edition of Chip Kidd's book i.

Schulz and family returned to Minneapolis, where they stayed until 1958. The family moved to Sebastopol, California, where Schulz built his first studio. It was here that Schulz was interviewed for the unmade television documentary i. Schulz's studio was destroyed by fire in 1966, and by 1969 he had moved again, to Santa Rosa, California.

Schulz lived and worked for over 30 years in Santa Rosa. In 2000, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors rechristened the "Sonoma County - Charles M. Schulz Airport" in his honor. The airport's amusing logo features Snoopy in goggles and scarf, taking to the skies on top of his red doghouse. The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, opened August 17, 2002, celebrates his life's work and art of cartooning. A bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Depot Park in downtown Santa Rosa.

Schulz was married twice. He married his first wife, Joyce Halverson, in 1951. They had five children. Their eldest son is author Monte Schulz. Schulz and Halverson divorced in 1972. He later married Jean Forsyth Clyde in 1973, with whom he was married for the rest of his life.

Schulz's father died in 1966 while visiting him, the same year his first studio located west of Santa Rosa in Sebastopol, California, burnt down.

Schulz touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, i (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible (Luke 2:8-14) to explain "what Christmas is all about." Schulz had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. By the late 1980s he told one of his biographers (Rheta Grimsley Johnson, 1989) that he identified with Secular Humanism. In the Sixties, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and dialogues in i as being consistant with parts of Christian theology, as he (Short) explained in his bestselling paperback book, i. Schulz did not endorse Short's specific interpretations and often said that "the only theology is no theology," yet Schulz gave permission to use many of his strips in the book.

i ran for nearly 50 years without interruption and had appeared in over 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. In November 1999 Schulz had a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized to his stomach. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he couldn't read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999, at the age of 77. This was difficult for Schulz, and he was quoted as saying "I never dreamed that this would happen to me. I always had the feeling that I would stay with the strip until I was in my early eighties, or something like that. But all of sudden it's gone. It's been taken away from me. I did not take it away. This was taken away from me."

The last original strip ran on February 13, 2000, including a statement from Schulz that his family wished for the strip to end when he was no longer able to produce it. Schulz had died of a heart attack at 9:45 p.m. the night before, in Santa Rosa. Schulz had previously predicted that the strip would outlive him, with his reason being that comic strips are usually drawn weeks before their publication. As part of his will, Schulz had requested that the i characters remain as authentic as possible and that no new comic strips based on them be drawn. United Features has legal ownership of the strip, but his wishes have been honored, although reruns of the strip are still being syndicated to newspapers. He is interred in Pleasant Hills Cemetery, in Sebastopol.

He was also a fan of hockey and was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993. On June 28, 1996, Schulz was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right next to Walt Disney's. A replica of this star appears outside his former studio in Santa Rosa, California. The Charles M. Schulz Museum opened in 2002 two blocks away from this same studio. He received the National Cartoonist Society Humor Comic Strip Award in 1962 for i, their Elzie Segar Award in 1980, their Reuben Award for 1955 and 1964, and their Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.

Forbes Magazine has rated Schulz the "highest paid deceased person" in America, with his estate continuing to garner income totaling more than $32 million since his passing. According to the book "Where Are They Buried?" (as well as other sources), Charles M. Schulz's income during his lifetime totaled more than $1.1 billion dollars, a true testament the impact Schulz had on three generations of Americans who grew up with the Peanuts gang and "good Ol' Charlie Brown".

Schulz is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America for his service to all American youth.

"[It] would be impossible to narrow down three or two or even one direct influence on [Schulz's] personal drawing . The uniqueness of Peanuts has set it apart for years...That one-of-kind quality permeates every aspect of the strip and very clearly extends to the drawing. It is purely his with no clear forerunners and no subsequent pretenders." (Quoted from "Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz," p. 68.)