By Paula Denault
Charles Monroe Schulz was born on November 26, 1922 in St. Paul Minnesota. It seems he was destined for comic strips, for soon after Charles was born his uncle dubbed him “Sparky” after the horse Spark Plug from the Barney Google comic strip, and every Sunday throughout his childhood he and his father would share a morning ritual of reading the funnies. At a very early age he knew he wanted to be a cartoonist. Apparently his kindergarten teacher saw promise in him as well, as she told him, “Some day, Charles, you are going to be an artist.” Indeed he was!
Sparky did very well in elementary school and was advanced two grade levels. Being the youngest and smallest child in his class proved very difficult for him socially, however, and his grades began to fall. One thing he knew he could take comfort in was his art. He loved to draw and would scour every comic strip and artist collections he could get his hands on.
While still a teenager he had his very first cartoon published in the nationally-syndicated Ripley’s Believe it or Not newspaper. This cartoon happened to be of his dog, Spike, who was part pointer and part hound… and did I mention he was black and white just like Snoopy?! What a proud moment that was for he and his family! This gave him the confidence to pursue an art correspondence course during his senior year in high school. After high school, Schulz began sending his cartoons to newspapers and magazines. He was met with rejection many times over and before he could meet with any success two major events would have a deep and profound effect on Schulz’s life. In 1943, within days of each other, his mother passed away of cervical cancer, and he boarded a troop train to begin his army career in Camp Campbell, Kentucky. The grief over losing his mother with whom he was extremely close, coupled with the rigor and uncertainty of military life left him deeply lonely. Schulz would go on to serve as a machine-gun squad leader in Germany, France and Austria. Though extremely proud of his accomplishments in the military, he is also quoted as saying, “The army taught me all I needed to know about loneliness.” These haunting sentiments would later be voiced throughout his Peanuts comic strips.
Schulz was discharged from the Army in 1945 and returned home to St. Paul, where he began to reignite his passion for becoming a cartoonist. He began working for his alma mater, Art Instruction Schools, as an art instructor. There he had two coworkers who would find their way into Shultz’s first cartoons: Charlie Brown and Linus Mauer. He also had a significant love interest in a girl named Donna Mae Johnson who would break his heart and later enter his comic strips as the “little red-haired girl.” Schulz’s first cartoon panel, entitled Li’l Folks, was published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The characters were children with rather large heads and rather precocious wisdom. He then sold 17 panel cartoons to The Saturday Evening Post. When the Pioneer Press stopped carrying his comic strip, Schulz made several attempts to find another newspaper to pick them up. After several rejections, Schulz sold his strip to United Feature Syndicate in 1950. They renamed his strip, Peanuts, a title Schulz called “undignified, inappropriate, and confusing.” He feared if he argued too much, however, the syndicate would drop him so he accepted the $90 payment for his first month of strips and, thus, the Peanuts comic strip was born. United Feature Syndicate ran the Peanuts strip in seven newspapers across the country. “The rest is history” as they say!
Schulz could not have imagined the Peanuts strip would become a worldwide sensation! Over the course of its 50-year run, Schulz would publish a total of 17,897 comic strips that would run in more than 2,600 newspapers worldwide. Schulz himself refused to use assistants, but insisted on drawing and writing each and every strip himself, thus taking only one vacation in his lifetime: for his 75th birthday!
On December 14, 1999 Schulz announced his retirement due to health problems. California lawmakers declared Sunday, February 13, 2000 as “Charles M. Schulz Day” to coincide with the final Peanuts Sunday strip. It seems Peanuts and Schulz would exit together, as Schulz passed away the evening before the final Sunday Peanuts strip appeared in newspapers around the world on February 13th as planned.
Schulz was posthumously awarded the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Cartoonists Society and the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress. Schulz truly embodied the spirit of his beloved Charlie Brown – he never gave up hope that one day he would succeed. And succeed he did!