Sunday, June 14, 2026

A00213 - Charles M. Schulz, American Cartoonist Who Created "Peanuts"

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Schulz, Charles M. 

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Charles M. Schulz
Schulz drawing Charlie Brown in 1956
BornCharles Monroe Schulz
November 26, 1922
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
DiedFebruary 12, 2000 (aged 77)
Santa Rosa, California, U.S.
AreaCartoonist, Writer, Inker
Notable works
Peanuts
Spouses
  • Joyce Halverson
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1951; div. 1972)​
  • Jean Forsyth Clyde
    ​
    (m. 1973)​
Children5, including Meredith and Craig
Signature
Military career
AllegianceUnited States
Branch
United States Army
Service years
1943–1945
Rank
Staff Sergeant
Unit20th Armored Division
Conflicts
World War II
Other nameSparky

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"My Life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I am happy.  I can't figure it out.  What am I doing right?  (08/08/2025)

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Charles Schulz (born November 26, 1922, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.—died February 12, 2000, Santa Rosa, California) was an American cartoonist who created Peanuts, one of the most successful American comic strips of the mid-20th century.

Schulz, Charles
Schulz, CharlesCharles Schulz, 1956.

Schulz, the son of a barber, studied cartooning in an art correspondence school after graduating in 1940 from high school. He served in the army from 1943 to 1945 and returned first as an instructor with the art school and then as a freelance cartoonist with the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Saturday Evening Post (1948–49). He created the Peanuts strip (originally entitled Li’l Folks) in 1950, introducing a group of three-, four-, and five-year-old characters based upon semiautobiographical experiences. The main character is Charlie Brown, who represents a sort of “everyman,” a sensitive but bland and unremarkable child. Schulz channeled the loneliness that he had experienced in his army days and the frustrations of everyday life into Charlie Brown, who is often made the butt of jokes. One of Schulz’s initial themes arose from the cruelty that exists among children. The character of Snoopy, a beagle hound with frustrated dreams of glory, is often portrayed as being wiser than the children. Other characters include Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister; the tyrannical and contrary “fussbudget,” Lucy; her younger brother, Linus, who drags his security blanket wherever he goes; and Schroeder, whose obsession is playing Beethoven on a toy piano.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown
A Boy Named Charlie BrownA scene from A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969).

The Peanuts comic strip was adapted to television and to the stage, and Schulz wrote the screenplays for two feature-length animated films. He was coauthor of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Me (1980). The 3-D computer-animated The Peanuts Movie, based on his comic strips, was released in 2015.

Quick Facts
Born:
November 26, 1922, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Died:
February 12, 2000, Santa Rosa, California (aged 77)
Notable Works:
“Peanuts”


In 1999 Schulz was diagnosed with colon cancer, and he announced his intention to retire in order to conserve his energies for his treatment program. Ironically, he died in his sleep the night before his final comic strip was published.

        


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Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz (/ʃʌlz/ SHULZ; November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Peanuts, featuring the characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and developed an interest in drawing while growing up in Saint Paul. He was conscripted in 1943 and served in the United States Army during the final years of World War II. After returning to Minnesota, Schulz began his comic strip career with Li'l Folks in 1947.

In 1950, Schulz redeveloped Li'l Folks as a four-panel comic strip and submitted it to United Features Syndicate, who renamed it Peanuts and began publishing that October. Schulz relocated to Northern California with his family in 1958. Beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, he helped write several animated television specials and four animated films based on his characters. He continued drawing Peanuts until his death in 2000.

Schulz is regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists in history, influencing cartoonists including Jim Davis, Murray Ball, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening and Dav Pilkey. He was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996, and was posthumously inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007.

Early life and education

Schulz's high school yearbook photo, 1940

Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in nearby Saint Paul.[1] He was the only child of the barber Carl Fredrich August Schulz[2] and Dena Bertina (née Halverson), and was of German and Norwegian descent. His uncle called him "Sparky" after the horse Spark Plug in Billy DeBeck's comic strip Barney Google, which Schulz enjoyed reading.[3][4] Schulz attended Saint Paul Central High School.[1]

Schulz loved drawing and sometimes drew his family dog, Spike, who ate unusual things, such as pins and tacks. In 1937, Schulz drew a picture of Spike and sent it to Ripley's Believe It or Not!. His drawing appeared in Robert Ripley's syndicated panel, captioned, "A hunting dog that eats pins, tacks, and razor blades is owned by C. F. Schulz, St. Paul, Minn." and "Drawn by 'Sparky'".[5][6] Schulz's drawings were rejected by his high school yearbook.[7] A five-foot-tall statue of Snoopy was placed in the school's office 60 years later.[8] After graduating, Schulz took a correspondence course from Art Instruction Schools.[1]

Military service and post-war positions

United States Army portrait of Sergeant Schulz, c. 1943

In November 1942, Schulz was drafted into the United States Army. He served as a staff sergeant with the 20th Armored Division in Europe during World War II as a squad leader on a .50 caliber machine gun team. His unit saw combat at the very end of the war. Schulz said he had only one opportunity to fire his machine gun but forgot to load it, and that the German soldier he could have fired at surrendered. Years later, Schulz proudly spoke of his wartime service.[9] For being under fire he received the Combat Infantryman Badge, of which he was proud.[10]

In February 1943, Schulz's mother died after a long battle with cervical cancer.[11] Schulz was with her as she died at home and later described his sadness that she never saw his work published.[11] In late 1945, Schulz returned to Minnesota, where he did lettering for a Roman Catholic comic magazine, Timeless Topix. In July 1946, Schulz took a job at Art Instruction, where he reviewed and graded students' work.[12]: 164  He worked there for several years as he developed his career as a comic creator.[13] At the school, he proposed marriage to a redhaired woman, Donna Johnson, who turned him down. Johnson inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, in Peanuts.[1]

Career

The anti-Communist propaganda comic book Is This Tomorrow (1947) featured some of Schulz's early work.[14][15] Schulz's first group of regular cartoons, a weekly series of one-panel jokes called Li'l Folks, was published from June 1947 to January 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, with Schulz usually doing four one-panel drawings per issue. It was in Li'l Folks that Schulz first used the name Charlie Brown for a character, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys as well as one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In May 1948, Schulz sold his first one-panel drawing to The Saturday Evening Post; within the next two years, a total of 17 untitled drawings by Schulz were published in the Post,[16] simultaneously with his work for the Pioneer Press. Around the same time, he tried having Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association; Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but negotiations broke down. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January 1950.[17]

Later that year, Schulz approached United Feature Syndicate (UFS) with Li'l Folks, and the syndicate became interested. By that time, Schulz had also developed a comic strip, usually using four panels rather than one; to Schulz's delight, the syndicate preferred the longer version. However, to his consternation, the syndicate had to change the title for Schulz's strip for legal reasons. Schulz selected the name Peanuts.[18]

Peanuts first appeared on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers. The weekly Sunday page debuted on January 6, 1952. After a slow start, Peanuts eventually became one of the most popular comic strips in history, as well as one of the most influential. Schulz also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip, It's Only a Game (1957–59); however, he abandoned it after the success of Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a gag cartoon, Young Pillars, featuring teenagers, to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.

In 1957 and 1961, Schulz illustrated two volumes of Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darndest Things.[19][20] In 1964, he illustrated a collection of letters, Dear President Johnson, by Bill Adler.[21]

Peanuts

Main article: Peanuts

At its height, Peanuts was published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. Over nearly 50 years, Schulz drew 17,897 published Peanuts strips.[22] The strips, plus merchandise and product endorsements, produced revenues of more than $1 billion per year, with Schulz earning an estimated $30–40 million annually.[1] During the strip's run, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; reruns of the strip ran during his vacation, the only time that occurred during Schulz's life.[23]

Rinehart & Company published the first collection of Peanuts strips in July 1952. Many more books followed, greatly contributing to the strip's increasing popularity. In 2004, Fantagraphics began their Complete Peanuts series. Peanuts also proved popular in other media; the first animated TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, aired in December 1965 and won an Emmy award.[24] Numerous TV specials followed, the latest being Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical in 2025. Until his death, Schulz wrote or co-wrote the TV specials, as well as the films A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Snoopy Come Home, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!), and oversaw their production.

Schulz receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at Knott's Berry Farm in June 1996

Charlie Brown, the principal character of Peanuts, was named after a co-worker at Art Instruction Inc. Schulz drew much from his own life. Some examples include:

  • Like Charlie Brown's parents, Schulz's father was a barber and his mother a housewife.[25]
  • Like Charlie Brown, Schulz had often felt shy and withdrawn. In an interview with Charlie Rose in May 1997, Schulz observed, "I suppose there's a melancholy feeling in a lot of cartoonists, because cartooning, like all other humor, comes from bad things happening."[26]
  • Schulz reportedly had an intelligent dog when he was a boy. Although this dog was a pointer, not a beagle like Snoopy, family photos confirm a certain physical resemblance.[27]
  • References to Snoopy's brother Spike living outside of Needles, California, were influenced by the few years (1928–30) the Schulz family lived there; they moved to Needles to join other family members who had relocated from Minnesota to tend to an ill cousin.[28]
  • Schulz's inspiration for Charlie Brown's unrequited love for the Little Red-Haired Girl was Donna Mae Johnson, an Art Instruction Inc. accountant with whom he fell in love. When Schulz finally proposed to her in June 1950, shortly after he had made his first contract with his syndicate, she turned him down and married another man.[29]
  • Linus and Shermy were named for his good friends Linus Maurer and Sherman Plepler, respectively.[30]
  • Peppermint Patty was inspired by Patricia Swanson, one of his cousins on his mother's side. Schulz devised the character's name when he saw peppermint candies in his house.[31][32]
  • Sally calls Linus her "Sweet Babboo."[33] The term of endearment was inspired by a phrase Jean Schulz used for her husband, "I called him, 'Sweet Babboo' and instead of saying, 'O, that's clever, I think I'll use that,' it just showed up six weeks later in the comic strip!"[34]

Influences

The Charles M. Schulz Museum cites Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) and Bill Mauldin as key influences on Schulz's work. In his own strip, Schulz regularly described Snoopy's annual Veterans Day visits with Mauldin, including mention of Mauldin's World War II cartoons.[35] Schulz also credited George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs), Elzie C. Segar (Thimble Theatre) and Percy Crosby (Skippy) as influences. In a 1994 address to fellow cartoonists, Schulz discussed several of them.[36] But according to his biographer Rheta Grimsley Johnson:

It would be impossible to narrow down three or two or even one direct influence on [Schulz's] personal drawing style. The uniqueness of "Peanuts" has set it apart for years ... That one-of-a-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.[37]

According to the museum, Schulz watched the 1941 film Citizen Kane 40 times. The character Lucy van Pelt also expresses a fondness for the film; in one strip, she cruelly spoils the ending for her younger brother.[38]

Biographer David Michaelis wrote that Schulz considered Jim Davis, the author of Garfield, his greatest rival. Schulz disliked Davis's low, broad-appeal approach and was jealous when Garfield eclipsed Peanuts in popularity. However, Schulz frequently provided advice to the younger Davis, particularly in the realms of merchandising and franchising, by using the strategy he had developed for Snoopy and allowing Davis to develop it further for Garfield. Davis considered Schulz a valuable mentor.[39] Davis credits Schulz with redesigning Garfield in his modern form; while Schulz and Davis were working on their Peanuts and Garfield television specials in adjacent rooms, Davis was struggling to work Garfield's obese, quadrupedal physique into physical gags and asked Schulz for ideas. Schulz sketched out a redesign—bipedal and pot-bellied but slimmer—that Davis has used in its basic form since.[40]

Schulz had a mutual respect for Robb Armstrong, the author of Jump Start; for the 1994 special You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown, Schulz gave Franklin the last name "Armstrong" in homage.[41][42] Armstrong would later collaborate with Schulz's sons on the streaming special "Welcome Home, Franklin," part of the Apple TV+ series Snoopy Presents.[43]

Personal life

Schulz's Signature ("Play Ball" Lithograph) in 2024

In April 1951, Schulz married Joyce Halverson, who was not related to his mother Dena Halverson Schulz.[44] He also adopted Halverson's daughter, Meredith Hodges. Later the same year, they moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Their son, Monte, was born in February 1952; three more children, Craig, Amy and Jill, were born later in Minnesota.[45]

Schulz and his family moved to Minneapolis and stayed until 1958. They then moved to Sebastopol, California, where Schulz built his first studio. Until then, he had worked at home or in a small rented office room. It was there that Schulz was interviewed for the unaired television documentary A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Some of the footage was eventually used in a later documentary, Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz.[46] Schulz's father died while visiting him in 1966, the same year Schulz's Sebastopol studio burned down. By 1969, Schulz had moved to Santa Rosa, California, where he lived and worked until his death. While briefly living in Colorado Springs, Schulz painted a mural on the bedroom wall of his daughter Meredith, featuring Patty with a balloon, Charlie Brown jumping over a candlestick, and Snoopy playing on all fours. The wall was removed in 2001, and donated and relocated to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.[47]

By Thanksgiving of 1970, Schulz's marriage was strained,[48] and the couple divorced in 1972. He married Jean Forsyth Clyde in September 1973, whom he had first met when she brought her daughter to his hockey rink.[48] They were married for 27 years, until Schulz's death.[49]

Schulz's son Craig has served as president of the Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates licensing company, located at One Snoopy Place in Santa Rosa, and has had a prominent role in modern Peanuts adaptations, including The Peanuts Movie (2015).[50][51][52] Schulz's daughter Jill starred in the 1988 live action and animation hybrid Peanuts special It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown.[53]

Kidnapping attempt

On May 8, 1988, two gunmen in ski masks entered Schulz's home through an unlocked door, planning to kidnap Jean, but the attempt failed when Schulz's daughter Jill drove up to the house, prompting the would-be kidnappers to flee. Sonoma County Sheriff Dick Michaelsen said, "It was obviously an attempted kidnap-ransom. This was a targeted criminal act. They knew exactly who the victims were." Neither Schulz nor Jean were hurt during the incident.[54][55]

Sports

Charles M. Schulz Highland Arena in 2007

Schulz had a long association with ice sports, and both figure skating and ice hockey featured prominently in his cartoons. In Santa Rosa, he built and owned the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which opened in 1969 and featured a snack bar called "The Warm Puppy Café".[7] Schulz's daughter Amy served as a model for the figure skating in the television special She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980). Schulz also was very active in senior ice-hockey tournaments; in 1975, he formed Snoopy's Senior World Hockey Tournament at his Redwood Empire Ice Arena, and in 1981, he was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy for outstanding service to the sport of hockey in the United States.[56] Schulz also enjoyed golf and was a member of the Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club from 1959 to 2000.

In 1998, Schulz hosted the first Over-75 Hockey Tournament. In 2000, the Ramsey County Board in St. Paul, Minnesota, voted to rename the Highland Park Ice Arena the Charles M. Schulz–Highland Arena in his honor. Schulz also used his hockey rink for tennis exhibitions after meeting Billie Jean King.[57]

Art

Schulz's favorite artist in his later years was Andrew Wyeth.[58] As a young adult, Schulz developed a passion for classical music. Although the piano-playing character Schroeder in Peanuts adored Ludwig van Beethoven, Schulz's favorite composer was Johannes Brahms.[1] He had a strong respect for the Footrot Flats creator Murray Ball; the two influenced each other throughout their careers.[59]

Religion

According to a 2015 "spiritual biography", Schulz's faith was complex and personal.[60] He often touched on religious themes in his work, including in the classic television cartoon A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features Linus quoting Luke 2 to explain "what Christmas is all about." Schulz said that Linus represented his spiritual side, and the spiritual biography points out a much wider array of religious references.[60]

Brought up in a Lutheran family, Schulz was active in the Church of God as a young adult and later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church.[60] In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations in his lectures on the Gospel, as explained in his book The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several he wrote on religion, Peanuts, and popular culture.[61]

Schulz's daughter, Amy, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during her relationship with a Latter-day Saint boyfriend. According to Amy, Schulz told her that the "church is either true or it's a hoax. And I think it's a hoax." Although Schulz was disenchanted by Mormonism and his daughter's conversion, he continued to support her and, according to Amy, told her that he appreciated the bond between the two of them created by her belief "in Christ and the scriptures."[62]

From the late 1980s, Schulz said in interviews that some people had described him as a "secular humanist" but that he did not know one way or the other:[63]

I do not go to church anymore ... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.[64]

In 2013, Schulz's widow said:

I think that he was a deeply thoughtful and spiritual man. Sparky was not the sort of person who would say "oh that's God's will" or "God will take care of it." I think to him that was an easy statement, and he thought that God was much more complicated.

When he came back from the army he was very lonely. His mother had died and he was invited to church by a pastor who had prepared his mother's service from the Church of God. Sparky's father was worried about him and was talking to the pastor and so the pastor invited Sparky to come to church. So Sparky went to church, joined the youth group and for a good 4–5 years he went to Bible study and went to church 3 times a week (2 Bible studies, 1 service). He said he had read the Bible through three times and taught Sunday school. He was always looking for what those passages REALLY might have meant. Some of his discussions with priests and ministers were so interesting because he wanted to find out what these people (who he thought were more educated than he) thought.

When he taught Sunday school, he would never tell people what to believe. God was very important to him, but in a very deep way, in a very mysterious way.[65]

Failing health and retirement

Schulz in 1993

In July 1981, Schulz underwent heart bypass surgery. During his hospital stay, President Ronald Reagan phoned to wish him a quick recovery.[citation needed]

In the 1980s, Schulz complained that "sometimes my hand shakes so much I have to hold my wrist to draw." This led to an erroneous impression that Schulz had Parkinson's disease. According to a letter from his physician, placed in the Archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum by his widow, Schulz had essential tremor, a condition alleviated by beta blockers. Schulz still insisted on writing and drawing the strip by himself, resulting in noticeably shakier lines over time.[66]

In November 1999, Schulz suffered several small strokes and a blocked aorta; he was later found to have colorectal cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and because he could not see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999. The decision was difficult for Schulz, who told Al Roker on The Today Show, "I never dreamed that this was what would happen to me. I always had the feeling that I would probably stay with the strip until I was in my early eighties. But all of a sudden it's gone. It's been taken away from me. I did not take this away from me."[12]

Schulz was asked if, in his final Peanuts strip, Charlie Brown would finally get to kick the football after so many decades (one of the many recurring themes in Peanuts was Charlie Brown's attempts to kick a football while Lucy was holding it, only to have Lucy pull it back at the last moment, causing him to fall). His response, "Oh, no. Definitely not. I couldn't have Charlie Brown kick that football; that would be a terrible disservice to him after nearly half a century." But in a December 1999 interview, holding back tears, Schulz recounted the moment when he signed his final strip, saying, "All of a sudden I thought, 'You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even got to kick the football. What a dirty trick—he never had a chance to kick the football.'"[48][67]

Death

A memorial to Charles M. Schulz at the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery (2023)

Schulz died in his sleep of a heart attack in his Santa Rosa home on February 12, 2000, at the age of 77.[68][69] He was suffering from colorectal cancer. The last original Peanuts strip was published the following day. He had predicted that the strip would outlive him because the strips were usually drawn weeks before their publication. Schulz was buried at Pleasant Hills Cemetery in Sebastopol, California, where he first lived after relocating from Minnesota.[1]

Family and associates, including Jean Schulz, Lynn Johnston and Rick Kirkman, paid tribute to him via media outlets.[1][70] Over 40 syndicated cartoonists in addition to Kirkman and Johnston paid homage to Schulz and Peanuts on May 27 by incorporating his characters into their over 100 comic strips that day, including Garfield by fellow associate Jim Davis and Dilbert by Scott Adams.[71][72][73]

While UFS retained ownership of the strip, Schulz requested that the syndicator allow no other artist to draw Peanuts. UFS honored his wishes, instead syndicating reruns. Because Schulz considered other media separate from the strip, new television specials and comic books with the Peanuts characters have been made since his death.

Awards

Schulz's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008

Schulz received the National Cartoonists Society's Humor Comic Strip Award in 1962 for Peanuts and the Society's Elzie Segar Award in 1980; he was the first two-time winner of their Reuben Award (for 1955 and 1964) and the winner of their Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.[74] He was also an avid hockey fan; in 1981, Schulz was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy for outstanding contributions to the sport of hockey in the United States, and he was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993.[75]

In 1988, the Boy Scouts of America, a youth organization, honored Schulz with its Silver Buffalo Award. He was recognized for his service to American youth.[76] On June 28, 1996, Schulz received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, adjacent to Walt Disney's.[77] A replica of this star appears outside his former Santa Rosa studio. On November 2, 2015, Snoopy was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[78]

On January 1, 1974, Schulz served as the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. This led to the only Peanuts strip in which he made any reference to himself: Lucy was watching the parade, and told Linus that the Grand Marshal was somebody "you've never heard of". The same year, he received the Inkpot Award.[79] In 1980, Schulz received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, presented by Awards Council member Judge John Sirica.[80] Schulz was a keen bridge player, and Peanuts occasionally included bridge references. In 1997, the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) awarded both Snoopy and Woodstock the honorary rank of Life Master. Schulz was delighted.[81][82]

Charles M. Schulz Congressional Gold Medal in 2000

On February 10, 2000, two days before Schulz's death, Congressman Mike Thompson introduced H.R. 3642, a bill to award Schulz the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor the United States legislature can bestow.[83] The bill passed the House (with only Ron Paul voting no and 24 not voting)[84] on February 15, and the bill was sent to the Senate, where it passed unanimously on May 2.[85] The Senate also considered a related bill, S.2060 (introduced by Dianne Feinstein).[86] President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on June 20, 2000. On June 7, 2001, Schulz's widow Jean accepted the award on behalf of her late husband in a public ceremony.[87]

Schulz was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007.[88] Schulz was the inaugural recipient of the Harvey Kurtzman Hall of Fame Award, accepted by Karen Johnson, Director of the Charles M. Schulz Museum, at the 2014 Harvey Awards, held at the Baltimore Comic Convention in Baltimore, Maryland.[89][90] The U.S. Postal Service commemorated the 100th anniversary of Schulz's birth with postage stamps honoring him "alongside his beloved characters".[91]

Military awards and decorations

U.S. service medals
World War II Victory Medal
Army Good Conduct Medal
European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
American Campaign Medal
Army of Occupation Medal
U.S. Army badges and patches
Combat Infantryman Badge
20th Armored Division

Biographies

Multiple biographies have been written about Schulz, including Rheta Grimsley Johnson's Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz (1989), which Schulz authorized.[29]

The lengthiest biography, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (2007) by David Michaelis, was widely criticized by the Schulz family; Schulz's son Monte stated it has "a number of factual errors throughout  ... [including] factual errors of interpretation", and he extensively documents these errors in a number of essays. However, Michaelis maintains that there is "no question" his work is accurate.[92][93][94] Although cartoonist Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes) feels the biography does justice to Schulz's legacy, while giving insight into the emotional impetus of the creation of the strips, cartoonist and critic R.C. Harvey regards the book as falling short both in describing Schulz as a cartoonist and in fulfilling Michaelis' stated aim of "understanding how Charles Schulz knew the world". Harvey believes that Michaelis' biography inductively bends the facts to a thesis rather than logically deducing a thesis from the facts.[95][96][97] Dan Shanahan's review, in the American Book Review (vol 29, no. 6), of Michaelis' biography faults the biography not for factual errors, but for "a predisposition" to finding problems in Schulz's life to explain his art, regardless of how little the material lends itself to Michaelis' interpretations. Shanahan cites, in particular, such things as Michaelis' crude characterizations of Schulz's mother's family, and "an almost voyeuristic quality" to the hundred pages devoted to the breakup of Schulz's first marriage.[98]

In light of Michaelis' biography and the controversy surrounding his interpretation of Charles Schulz's personality, responses from Schulz's family reveal some intimate details about Schulz's persona beyond that of a mere artist.[99]

In August 2023, author and comic artist Francesco Matteuzzi [it] and comic artist Luca Debus, both longtime Peanuts fans, wrote and illustrated Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz. In panels styled after his famous work, Schulz himself narrates the story of his own life.[100] The biography received positive reviews, with The Comics Journal noting, "at the end of 2023, it was welcomed by many critics and readers as one of the most interesting graphic novels of that year."[101]

Legacy

A proponent of crewed spaceflight, Schulz was honored with the naming of Apollo 10 command module Charlie Brown and lunar module Snoopy, which launched on May 18, 1969. The Communications Carrier Assembly, a cloth cap containing headphones and microphones worn within the Apollo space suit, was nicknamed the Snoopy cap because it resembled Snoopy's white head and black ears. The Silver Snoopy award is given to NASA employees and contractors for outstanding achievements related to human flight safety or mission success. The award certificate states that it is in appreciation for "professionalism, dedication and outstanding support that greatly enhanced space flight safety and mission success".[102]

On July 1, 1983, Camp Snoopy opened at Knott's Berry Farm; it is a forested, mountain-themed area featuring the Peanuts characters. It has rides designed for younger children and is one of the most popular areas of the amusement park.[103] Since, similar Camp Snoopy and Planet Snoopy areas have opened at several Six Flags parks.

When the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, opened in 1992, its amusement park had a Peanuts theme and was called Camp Snoopy, which was replaced by Nickelodeon Universe in 2006, when the mall lost the rights to use the characters.[104]

The Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center at Sonoma State University opened in 2000 and now stands as one of the largest buildings in the California State University system, as well as in all of California, with a 400,000-volume general collection and a 750,000-volume automated retrieval system capacity. The $41.5 million building was named after Schulz, and his wife donated the $5 million needed to build and furnish the structure.[105]

In 2000, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors renamed the county airport the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport. The airport's logo features Snoopy in goggles and scarf, taking to the skies on top of his red doghouse.[106]

Peanuts on Parade has been St. Paul, Minnesota's tribute to its favorite native cartoonist. It began in 2000 with the placing of 101 5-foot-tall (1.5 m) statues of Snoopy throughout the city of St. Paul. Every summer for the following four years, statues of a different Peanuts character were placed on the sidewalks of St. Paul: Charlie Brown Around Town (2001), Looking for Lucy (2002), Linus Blankets St. Paul (2003) and Snoopy lying on his doghouse (2004). The statues were auctioned off at the end of each summer, so some remain around the city, but others have been relocated. The auction proceeds were used for artist's scholarships and for permanent bronze statues of the Peanuts characters, which are in Landmark Plaza and Rice Park in downtown St. Paul.[107]

The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa opened in August 2002, two blocks away from his former studio, celebrating his life's work and the art of cartooning.[108] A bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Depot Park in downtown Santa Rosa.[109]

Santa Rosa, California, celebrated the 55th anniversary of the strip in 2005 by continuing the Peanuts on Parade tradition, beginning with It's Your Town, Charlie Brown (2005), Summer of Woodstock (2006), Snoopy's Joe Cool Summer (2007), and Look Out For Lucy (2008).

In 2006, Forbes ranked Schulz as the third-highest-earning deceased celebrity, for he had earned $35 million in the previous year.[110] In 2009, he was ranked sixth.[111] According to Tod Benoit, Schulz's income during his lifetime totaled more than $1.1 billion.[112]

When asked about Schulz's impact in a 2007 interview, cartoonist Bill Watterson said, "Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale – in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow."[113]

Schulz's Santa Rosa home was destroyed by the Tubbs Fire, one of the October 2017 wildfires in California.[114]

On November 26, 2022, over 75 American syndicated cartoonists honored Schulz on what would have been his 100th birthday.[115][116]

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Book sources

Further reading

  • Gordon, Ian; Gardner, Jared, eds. (July 12, 2017). The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life. University of Mississippi Press. ISBN 9781496812902.
  • Blauner, Andrew, ed. (October 22, 2019). The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life. Library of America. ISBN 9781598536164.
  • Schuman, Michael (2018). Charles Schulz: Cartoonist and Writer. Enslow Publishing. ISBN 9780766092099.

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Copilot Search Branding

Charles M. Schulz’s quotes blend humor, wisdom, and heartfelt insight, reflecting on life, love, and human nature.

Inspirational and Life Quotes

  • “Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.” – Charles M. Schulz Gracious Quotes
  • “Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.” – Charles M. Schulz BrainyQuote
  • “I think I've discovered the secret of life – you just hang around until you get used to it.” – Charles M. Schulz Goodreads
  • “In life, it's not where you go, it's who you travel with.” – Charles M. Schulz A-Z Quotes
  • “Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” – Charles M. Schulz Gracious Quotes

Love and Happiness

  • “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.” – Charles M. Schulz Goodreads
  • “Happiness is a warm puppy.” – Charles M. Schulz Goodreads
  • “Happiness is waking up, looking at the clock and finding that you still have two hours left to sleep.” – Charles M. Schulz Gracious Quotes
  • “Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” – Charles M. Schulz BrainyQuote

Humor and Wit

  • “I love mankind … it's people I can't stand!!” – Charles M. Schulz Goodreads
  • “Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?' Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, 'We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand word essay.'” – Charles M. Schulz Gracious Quotes
  • “Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.” – Charles M. Schulz BrainyQuote
  • “People shouldn’t be embarrassed just because they get caught acting a little silly.” – Charles M. Schulz Unico Things

Reflection and Philosophy

  • “All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.” – Charles M. Schulz Goodreads
  • “I don’t think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship became a substitute for the love that we should show one another.” – Charles M. Schulz Gracious Quotes
  • “There’s a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.” – Charles M. Schulz Unico Things
  • “This is my depressed stance. When you’re depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you’ll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this.” – Charles M. Schulz Unico Things
    These quotes capture Schulz’s unique blend of humor, insight, and humanity, making them timeless reflections on everyday life, relationships, and personal growth. They are perfect for inspiration, sharing, or simply enjoying the wit of the creator of Peanuts.

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Charles M. Schulz, 'Peanuts' Creator, Dies at 77

By Sarah Boxer

See the article in its original context from February 14, 2000, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints
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Charles M. Schulz, the creator of ''Peanuts,'' the tender and sage comic strip starring Charlie Brown and Snoopy that is read by 355 million people around the world, died in his sleep on Saturday night at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., just hours before his last cartoon ran in the Sunday newspapers. He was 77.

The cause of death was colon cancer, said Paige Braddock, creative director for Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates.

Mr. Schulz drew ''Peanuts'' for nearly half a century. He swore that no one else would ever draw the comic strip and he kept his word. For years he drew ''Peanuts'' with a hand tremor. He finally put down his pen when he received a diagnosis of colon cancer after abdominal surgery in November.

His last daily strip ran on Jan. 3. His last Sunday page, which ran yesterday, carried a signed farewell in which he said, ''Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy . . . how can I ever forget them. . . .'' His wife, Jeannie, said, ''He had done everything he wanted.'

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Lynn Johnston, a friend of Mr. Schulz and the creator of ''For Better or for Worse,'' told The Associated Press, ''It's amazing that he dies just before his last strip is published.'' Such an ending, she said, was ''as if he had written it that way.''

She recalled something Mr. Schulz told her as she sat in the hospital with him last year: ''You control all these characters and the lives they live. You decide when they get up in the morning, when they're going to fight with their friends, when they're going to lose the game. Isn't it amazing how you have no control over your real life?'' But, Ms. Johnston said, ''I think, in a way, he did.''

The life of ''Peanuts'' and Charles Schulz were completely intertwined. ''The strip and he were one,'' said Patrick McDonnell, who draws the cartoon ''Mutts.'' ''He put his heart and soul into that strip.'' ''Peanuts,'' which reached readers in 75 countries, 2,600 papers and 21 languages every day, made Mr. Schulz very rich. The ''Peanuts'' strips, merchandise and product endorsements brought in $1.1 billion a year. And Mr. Schulz was said to have earned about $30 million to $40 million annually.

His saga of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and Linus ''is arguably the longest story ever told by one human being,'' Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, observed on the PBS ''NewsHour'' with Jim Lehrer, longer than any epic poem, any Tolstoy novel, any Wagner opera. In all Mr. Schulz drew more than 18,250 strips in nearly 50 years.

Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist and playwright, said that the ''Peanuts'' characters endure because they were the first real children in the comics pages, ones with doubts and anxieties. And there were a lot of them. ''Linus, Lucy, Charlie Brown -- these interesting little people formed a repertory company,'' he said.


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A Long-Running Ensemble Act

The cast of ''Peanuts'' changed remarkably little. It included Charlie Brown, a wishy-washy boy with a tree-loving kite and a losing baseball team; Snoopy, an unflappable beagle with a fancy inner life; Lucy, a fussbudget with a football and a curbside psychiatric clinic; Linus, a philosophical blanket-carrier; Sally, Charlie Brown's romantic little sister; Schroeder, a virtuoso on the toy piano and a Beethoven devotee; Peppermint Patty, a narcoleptic D-minus student; and, in later years, Woodstock, a small, expressive but speechless bird.

Mr. Schulz remembered waking up in the night many years ago and thinking, ''Good grief, who are all these little people? Must I live with them for the rest of my life?'' The answer was yes.

Charles Monroe Schulz, the son of Carl Schulz, a barber, like Charlie Brown's father, and the former Dena Halverson, was born in Minneapolis on Nov. 26, 1922. Young Charles was nicknamed Sparky after the horse Spark Plug in the comic strip ''Barney Google.'' He had a black-and-white dog named Spike (memorialized in the character of Snoopy's skinny Western brother).

He wanted to be a cartoonist as a child and practiced by drawing Popeye. ''Someday, Charles, you're going to be an artist,'' a kindergarten teacher told him after looking at his drawing of a man shoveling snow. His ambition was to do a comic strip as good as George Herriman's ''Krazy Kat,'' but Mr. Schulz also admired Picasso, Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. Snoopy kept a van Gogh and a Wyeth in his doghouse.

The hurts of Mr. Schulz's early years provided a lifetime of material. At Central High School in St. Paul, he flunked Latin, English, algebra and physics. ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' accepted one of his drawings when he was 15 -- a picture of Spike illustrating ''a hunting dog that eats pins, tacks and razor blades'' -- but the cartoons he drew for his high school yearbook were rejected. Mr. Schulz remembered his failures more vividly than his successes.

After his high school graduation he took a correspondence course from Art Instruction Inc., but before he could start a career he was drafted into the Army. He left for boot camp only days after his mother died of cancer. (Mr. Schulz later suggested that this coincidence might have been the reason for his lifelong hatred of travel.) During World War II, from 1943 to 1945, Mr. Schulz served in France and Germany and became a staff sergeant in the 20th Armored Division. He once refused to toss a grenade into an artillery emplacement because he saw a little dog wander into it.

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After the war he tried various odd jobs: lettering the comics at a Catholic magazine called Timeless Topix; drawing a weekly cartoon called ''Li'l Folks,'' the precursor to ''Peanuts,'' for the St. Paul Pioneer Press; and selling occasional spot cartoons to The Saturday Evening Post.

He also taught at Art Instruction Inc. There he fell in love with a redhead, Donna Johnson, and proposed marriage. She turned him down and married a fireman instead. He never forgot. Ms. Johnson became the Little Red-Haired Girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, who was often talked about but never seen in the strip. Mr. Schulz married Joyce Halverson in 1949; the marriage ended in divorce.

''You can't create humor out of happiness,'' Mr. Schulz said in his 1980 book, ''Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Me.''

''I'm astonished at the number of people who write to me saying, 'Why can't you create happy stories for us? Why does Charlie Brown always have to lose? Why can't you let him kick the football?' Well, there is nothing funny about the person who gets to kick the football.''

The strip's start was bittersweet. In 1949 Mr. Schulz submitted some of his ''Li'l Folks'' comic strips to United Feature Syndicate. The syndicate liked the strip but insisted on calling it ''Peanuts'' because ''Li'l Folks'' was too similar to the name of another strip. ''I was very upset with the title,'' Mr. Schulz once said, ''and still am.''

On Oct. 2, 1950, the first ''Peanuts'' strip was published. It depicted two children sitting on the sidewalk discussing Charlie Brown: ''Well, here comes ol' Charlie Brown!'' . . . ''Good ol' Charlie Brown'' . . . ''Yes, sir! Good ol' Charlie Brown.'' And then, as Charlie Brown passes them, ''How I hate him!''

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That year seven newspapers bought ''Peanuts,'' and Mr. Schulz earned $90 a week in royalties. But by 1953 the cartoon was a hit and he was earning $30,000 a year. In 1955 (and again in 1964) the National Cartoonists Society awarded Mr. Schulz the Reuben for being the outstanding cartoonist of the year. He received the Yale Humor Award in 1956 and the School Bell Award from the National Education Association in 1960.

Unrequited Love With Roots in Real Life

''Peanuts'' was based on repetition and predictability. As Mr. Schulz put it, ''All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away.'' One of the few innovations Mr. Schulz introduced was allowing Snoopy (after eight years) to stand on two feet and to have his thoughts written out in balloons.

Snoopy could always be counted on to nap, fantasize and wonder when his next meal would arrive. Charlie Brown, the round-headed blockhead (named after one of Mr. Schulz's childhood friends, not after the cartoonist himself), could always be counted on to persevere despite constant failure. He once held onto the string of a kite that was stuck in a tree for eight days running, until the rain made him stop. At the time it was the longest run of immobility for any cartoon character. His first home run came after nearly 43 years of strike outs, on March 30, 1993.

No adult ever appeared in ''Peanuts,'' though in television specials there were occasional wah-wah sounds denoting the voices of teachers and parents. As Mr. Schulz once put it, ''Well, there just isn't room for them.'' Curses never got worse than ''Aaugh!'' ''Good grief,'' ''Rats!'' ''Curse you, Red Baron!'' or a knot of lines scrunched up in frustration.

The strips were just the beginning. In 1952 Mr. Schulz started turning out ''Peanuts'' books: ''Peanuts,'' ''More Peanuts,'' ''Good Grief, More Peanuts!'' ''Good Ol' Charlie Brown,'' ''Happiness Is a Warm Puppy'' and dozens more. New compilations rolled off the presses every year for decades.

Eventually ''Peanuts'' was translated into Serbo-Croatian, Malay, Chinese, Tlingit, Catalan and 15 other languages. Books came out with titles like, ''Het Grote Snoopy Winterspelletjes-Boek'' and ''Du Bist Sub, Charlie Braun.''

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The 1960's brought animated ''Peanuts'' television specials. The first was ''A Charlie Brown Christmas,'' which Mr. Schulz wrote in one weekend with Lee Mendelson. Accompanied by Vince Guaraldi's jazz piano, animated by Bill Melendez and unassisted by any laugh track, ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' was shown on CBS in 1965 (and still runs every winter). It won an Emmy and a Peabody. Many more television specials followed, including ''It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.'' Five of the specials won Emmys. There were also ''Peanuts'' feature films, including ''A Boy Named Charlie Brown.''

The takeoffs came rolling in. In 1966 the Royal Guardsmen wrote a rock song, ''Snoopy and the Red Baron.'' In 1967 a musical, ''You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown,'' was produced Off Broadway. (A 1999 revival on Broadway won two Tony Awards.) ''Peanuts Gallery,'' a concerto, was composed by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1997. Mr. Schulz received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture. In 1990 his work was shown at the Louvre; the gala had Snoopys in couture.

Many pundits tried to put their finger on the ''Peanuts'' spell and they generally rambled on in a vaguely philosophical vein. Umberto Eco, who wrote the introduction to the first Italian ''Peanuts'' book, referred to Mr. Schulz's work as ''poesie interrompue,'' or interrupted poetry, and, using Freud, Beckett, Adler and Thomas Mann to back him up, said, ''These children affect us because in a certain sense they are monsters; they are the monstrous infantile reductions of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of the industrial civilization.''

In an essay called ''Peanuts: The Americanization of Augustine,'' Arthur Asa Berger, a scholar of popular culture, observed that Mr. Schulz was ''a mirthful moralist'' and a master of Freudian humor, humor that ''serves to mask aggression.''

Mr. Berger called Snoopy ''an existential hero in every sense of the term,'' a dog who ''strives, with dogged persistence and unyielding courage, to overcome what seems to be his fate -- that he is a dog.'' He is ''a bon vivant, he participates in history, he has an incredible imagination, he is witty, he expresses himself with virtuosity in any number of ways (eye movements, ear movements, tail movements, wisecracks, facial expressions) and he is superb as mimic and dancer.''

The most concerted attempt to bring ''Peanuts'' to heel philosophically came in the 1960's when Robert L. Short, a minister, wrote two books on ''Peanuts'' theology, ''The Gospel According to Peanuts'' (1964) and ''The Parables of Peanuts'' (1968). The Rev. Short saw signs of original sin in the ''Peanuts'' children, who were unable ''to produce any radical change for the better in themselves -- or in each other.'' He saw ''the hazard of worshiping deities'' demonstrated in Linus's belief in the Great Pumpkin. And he called Snoopy ''a typical Christian,'' a flawed character who is nonetheless good: ''He is lazy, he is a 'chow hound' without parallel, he is bitingly sarcastic, he is frequently a coward,'' Mr. Short wrote. But he is ''a hound of heaven.''

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If the ''Peanuts'' characters left themselves open to the maunderings of philosophers, ministers and analysts, they were even more vulnerable to toy, card, book and clothing manufacturers.

The licensing madness began in 1958 when the first plastic Snoopy and Charlie Brown came out. In 1960 Hallmark began printing ''Peanuts'' cards and party goods. Then came sweatshirts and pajamas, thermoses and lunch boxes. Plush Snoopy came in 1965. Woodstock slippers, Lucy picture frames, Charlie Brown music boxes followed. Mr. Schulz vetted all products for appropriateness and rejected some: baby wipes for aesthetic reasons, ashtrays, vitamins, sugary breakfast cereals, ice skates and tennis rackets.

There were commercials too. In 1957 the ''Peanuts'' characters started selling Ford Falcons. For 15 years they worked for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Snoopy was the official mascot of NASA, and in 1969 NASA's lunar excursion module on the Apollo 11 mission was called Snoopy. The command module was Charlie Brown.

A Menagerie Of Merchandising

By 1999 there were 20,000 different new products each year adorned by ''Peanuts'' characters. In 1994 Mr. Schulz was inducted into the Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association Hall of Fame. Jim Davis, the creator of the cartoon ''Garfield,'' who is no stranger to commercialization, said, ''Schulz created the industry as far as cartooning and licensing go.''

When asked whether he minded his characters selling merchandise, Mr. Schulz said, ''I don't think there's such a thing as going commercial with a comic strip because a comic strip is a commercial right from the beginning.'' It is there to sell newspapers, he said.

In 1989 Forbes listed the cartoonist among the ten wealthiest entertainers, earning $32 million a year.

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Nonetheless his lifestyle remained simple. Mr. Schulz, who hated to travel, said he would have been happy living his whole life in Minneapolis. But ''I had a restless first wife,'' so they moved to Sebastopol, Calif., and he set up his studio in Santa Rosa. In 1969, after the local ice rink closed, he and his wife, Joyce, built a new one, the Redwood Empire Ice Skating Arena. ''Because of Snoopy's hockey playing,'' Mr. Schulz explained, ''I have to keep in the game. So I bought an arena.''

Charles and Joyce Schulz had five children, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1972. He said, ''I don't think she liked me anymore, and I just got up and left one day.'' A year later he met Jeannie Clyde at the ice rink and married her.

Mr. Schulz's workday typically began with a trip in his Mercedes (license plate WDSTK1, after Woodstock) down from the hills near where he lived, breakfast at the ice rink's Warm Puppy Snack Bar, a trip to his stone-and-redwood studio at One Snoopy Place to draw his strip, lunch at the ice rink, more work in the afternoon in his studio and dinner at a restaurant with his wife.

While his small staff dealt with the commercial end of the business, he attended only to drawing. He used a yellow legal pad for sketching and drew with an Esterbrook Radial pen. He would start doodling until something funny happened. He never took suggestions from anyone (though he did draw on conversations, newspapers, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and his children's antics.

''Drawing a daily comic strip is not unlike having an English theme hanging over your head every day for the rest of your life,'' he once said. He could do a strip an hour and six strips a day, but preferred not to. He generally kept three months ahead of publication and never took more than ten days off at a time, and then only reluctantly.

''Peanuts'' continued to appear when Mr. Schulz had quadruple-bypass heart surgery in 1981. And it was only under orders from United Feature that he took off for five weeks in 1997 for his 75th birthday.

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Jeannie Schulz once said that all the characters in ''Peanuts'' are parts of her husband. ''He's crabby like Lucy, diffident like Charlie Brown. There's a lot of Linus -- he's philosophical and wondering about life.'' Like Schroeder, he loved classical music, though he preferred Brahms to Beethoven. And like Snoopy, he was a war buff. Snoopy had all of World War I covered. But Mr. Schulz knew all the World War II battlegrounds and was the head of a capital fund-raising campaign for the National D-Day Memorial.

He was a member of the Church of God, where he was a Sunday school teacher and administrator and would occasionally deliver the Sunday sermon.

People described Mr. Schulz as looking like a druggist. He found Garry Trudeau's ''Doonesbury'' and Walt Kelly's ''Pogo'' too political, but he admired the work of Cathy Guisewite, the cartoonist who draws ''Cathy,'' and Ms. Johnston, of ''For Better or for Worse.'' His favorite ice cream flavor was vanilla.

Mr. Schulz is survived by his wife, a philanthropist, and his children: Meredith Hodges, who raises mules in Loveland, Colo.; Charles Jr. (called Monte), a novelist in Nevada City, Calif.; Craig, a private pilot in Santa Rosa; Amy Johnson, a homemaker with nine children in Alpine, Utah; and Jill Schulz Transki, who runs an in-line skating business with her husband in Santa Barbara, Calif. He is also survived by two stepchildren, Brooke Clyde, a lawyer in Santa Rosa, and Lisa Brockway, a homemaker in Ashland, Oregon; and 18 grandchildren.

Personal Anxieties Shared With Millions

Despite his large family and large success he was a melancholy man who worried and was often lonely, depressed and plagued by panic attacks, features that Rheta Grimsley Johnson brought out in her 1989 biography ''Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz.'' Sally, Charlie Brown's sister, put it well in a school report on night and day: ''Daytime is so you can see where you're going. Nighttime is so you can lie in bed worrying.''

Mr. Schulz had a white terrier named Andy, played golf (12 handicap), tennis (for a while with Billie Jean King) and bridge. But he was most devoted to hockey and ice skating. He was a right-handed shot.

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He hated cats, coconut and sleeping away from home. And he never forgot a slight. Ms. Johnston once said, ''He's bitter about the little red-haired girl who didn't marry him, he's bitter about his divorce, he's bitter about getting old.'' And he was bitter about the lack of recognition cartoonists get. This is what he said about cartooning: ''It will destroy you. It will break your heart.''

The creator of one of the least troubled dogs of all time, Mr. Schulz compared his own panic to that of a dog ''running frantically down the road pursuing the family car.'' The dog ''is not really being left behind,'' he said, ''but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever.''

As Mr. Schulz got older he began to think about the end of his strip. His hand quavered, but he knew that he did not want anyone else to draw the cartoon. ''Everything has to end,'' he once said. ''This is my excuse for existence. No one else will touch it.'' In November he was hospitalized for colon cancer and started chemotherapy. On Dec. 14 he announced that his strip would end. But thoughts of death had long since seeped into his strip. ''After you've died, do you get to come back?'' Linus once asked Charlie Brown. He replied, ''If they stamp your hand.''

Mr. Schulz always felt for the little man and the little animal. He once said that his philosophy of life could be found in the Gospel of St. Luke: ''It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.''

Intertwined Lives: Complex 'Peanuts' Personalities and Their Creator

Charlie Brown

Also known as Blockhead, Good Ol' Charlie Brown, Chuck, Charles and Mr. Sack (which he was briefly called when he wore a sack over his head at camp to cover up a rash that looked like the stitching on a baseball).

First appearance Oct. 2, 1950.

Named for Charles M. Schulz's acquaintance, Charlie Brown. (As Mr. Schulz remembered the namesake, ''He was a very bright young man with a lot of enthusiasm for life. I began to tease him about his love for parties and I used to say, 'Here comes good ol' Charlie Brown, now we can have a good time.' '')

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Dog Snoopy.

Sister Sally.

Unrequited love The Little Red-Haired Girl.

True friends Linus, various pen pals (beginning on Sept. 1, 1958).

Accomplishments Had numerous footballs pulled from under him by Lucy, beginning on Nov. 16, 1952. Managed baseball team that never won. Hit one home run, on March 30, 1993. (''Winning is great, but it isn't funny,'' Mr. Schulz explained.) Lost many kites to vicious trees. Served as camp president when he was known as Mr. Sack.

Traits Round-headed, plain, gentle, decent, optimistic, unpopular, anxious.

Snoopy

Also known as World War I Flying Ace, Sugar Lips (he wished).

First appeared Oct. 4, 1950.

Born Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.

Owner Charlie Brown.

Siblings Spike, Belle, Marbles, Olaf, Andy.

Adopted by NASA, as a promotional stunt in 1968.

Accomplishments Walking on hind feet, thinking thoughts and sleeping on a pitched-roof doghouse, starting in 1960. (''There were other events, but the best thing I ever thought of was Snoopy using his own imagination,'' Mr. Schulz said. ''I don't recall how he got on top of the doghouse, but the first time he fell off, the strip ended with his saying, 'Life is full of rude awakenings.' '') Battled the Red Baron from his Sopwith Camel doghouse, beginning on Oct. 10, 1965, often shouting his fighting words, ''Curse you, Red Baron.''

Occupations Surgeon (in order to wear green booties), artist, lawyer, beagle scout with bird troop, skating coach and, beginning on July 12, 1965, novelist (published ''It Was a Dark and Stormy Night'' in 1971) and more than 100 other roles.

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Traits Epicurean, worldly, debonair, confident, fanciful, insistent about supper.

Lucy Van Pelt

Also known as Fussbudget and once called ''Crab grass on the lawn of life'' by Linus.

First appearance March 3, 1952.

Inspiration Mr. Schulz's daughter Meredith. (''We called our oldest daughter, Meredith, a fussbudget when she was very small.'')

Brothers Linus, Rerun

Unrequited love Schroeder (smitten on May 30, 1953).

Accomplishments Pulling numerous footballs out from under Charlie Brown, beginning on Nov. 16, 1952; ran curbside psychiatric clinic for five cents a visit, beginning on March 27, 1959; master of the short psychiatric session.

Famous words Spoken to Snoopy on April 25, 1960, ''Happiness is a warm puppy.''

Traits Crabby, vain, loud, bossy, lousy outfielder.

Linus Van Pelt

Also known as Sweet Babboo (by Sally).

First appearance Sept. 19, 1952.

Inspiration ''Linus came from a drawing that I made one day of a face almost like the one he now has,'' Mr. Schulz said. ''I experimented with some wild hair.''

Named for Linus Maurer, a friend of Mr. Schulz's.

Siblings Lucy and Rerun.

Mother Someone who puts strange notes in his lunch box


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Friend Charlie Brown.

Beloved teacher Miss Othmar.

Accomplishments Carried his blanket everywhere, starting on Jan 1, 1955. (Mr. Schulz remembered, ''I did not know then that the term 'security blanket' would later become part of the American language.'') Sat in many a pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin with no results, starting on Oct. 28, 1959, when he confused Halloween with Christmas. Knew when to quote St. Paul and other religious figures. Patted birds on head.

Traits Philosophical, loyal, self-possessed, literate, adept with blanket on ball field.

Peppermint Patty

Also called ''Sir'' (by Marcie), Patricia Reichardt (her real name).

First appearance Aug. 22, 1966.

Inspiration ''A dish of candy that was sitting around the house,'' Mr. Schulz said.

Unrequited love Charlie Brown (Chuck).

True friend Marcie.

Accomplishments Earned many D-minuses; slept in every possible position on desk in front of Marcie in school and dreamed unhelpful dreams; once entered an ice-skating competition (coached by Snoopy) that turned out to be a roller-skating competition.

Traits Unruly hair, good athlete, tomboy.

Schroeder

First appearance May 30, 1951.

Inspiration ''A toy piano which we had bought for our oldest daughter, Meredith, eventually became the piano which Schroeder uses for his daily practicing,'' Mr. Schulz said. Why Beethoven? ''It is funnier that way. My favorite composer is Brahms -- I could listen to him all day -- but Brahms isn't a funny word, Beethoven is.''

Accomplishments Played Beethoven on toy piano with black keys painted on. Fended off Lucy's amorous overtures.

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Traits Focused, serious, handsome, single-minded.

Spike

First appearance Aug. 13, 1975.

First mention Aug. 4, 1975.

Named for Mr. Schulz's first dog.

Brother Snoopy.

Residence Lonely desert.

Nearest town Needles, Calif.

Friends Cactuses.

Accomplishments Lying on rocks; snuggling with tumbleweeds; brief stint in infantry.

Traits Tired eyes, droopy mustache, bored, blase.

Woodstock

First appearance April 4, 1967.

Named June 22, 1970. ''For some time, a flock of birds had hung around Snoopy's house,'' Mr. Schulz said. ''One of them, particularly scatterbrained and clumsy, finally eclipsed the others.''

Friend Snoopy and various birds.

Accomplishments Birdbath hockey; camping; hiking; marshmallow roasts.

Traits Communicating in tick marks, which Snoopy could understand.

Rerun

First appearance March 26, 1973.

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First mention May 23, 1972.

Named May 31, 1972.

Siblings Lucy and Linus.

Accomplishments Softening Lucy's temper and surviving many rides in his mother's dangerous bicycle seat. ''His only fear is being the passenger on one of his mother's bicycle-riding errands,'' Mr. Schulz said. ''Somehow, Rerun is the only witness to her riding into grates and potholes.''

Traits Often mistaken for Linus, but wore overalls and was more skeptical; longed for a dog of his own and occasionally borrowed Snoopy.

Marcie

First appearance June 18, 1968, when she met Peppermint Patty at camp.

Best friend Peppermint Patty, whom she called Sir ''out of admiration and misguided manners,'' Mr. Schulz said.

Accomplishments Sat behind Peppermint Patty at school and shared homework and test answers with her.

True love Charles (Charlie Brown).

Traits Glasses, brainy, naive, not sportive.

Little Red-Haired Girl

First mention Nov. 11, 1963.

First appearance Never. Once seen in silhouette on May 25, 1998.

Inspiration Mr. Schulz's ''real-life love for red-haired Donna Johnson, whom I courted when I was a young man in Saint Paul. She chose someone else as I was about to propose to her, and that broke my heart.''

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Accomplishments Winning Charlie Brown's heart.

Traits Never seen, often missed, cute.

Franklin

First appearance July 31, 1968; he met Charlie Brown at the beach. (''They'd never met before because they went to different schools,'' Mr. Schulz said of Franklin, an African-American character, ''but they had fun playing ball so Charlie Brown invited Franklin to visit him.''

Accomplishments Center fielder on baseball team. Quoted the Old Testament and talked about his grandfather.

Traits No anxieties or obsessions.

Sally

First appearance Aug. 23, 1959.

Born May 26, 1959.

Named June 2, 1959.

Brother Charlie Brown.

Unrequited love Linus (Sweet Babboo).

Traits Romantic; flipped-up hair.

Pigpen

First appearance July 13, 1954.

Accomplishments Remained dirty. Mr. Schulz called Pigpen a '' 'human soil bank' who raises a cloud of dust on a perfectly clean street and passes out gumdrops that are invariably black. . . . Whether in a driving rain or falling snow, Pigpen always leaves a cloud of dust behind him as he walks.''

Traits Awe-inspiring dirtiness.

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