A giant-sized Snoopy greets children inside the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, in Santa Rosa, California,
before the memorial for Charles Schulz, Monday, February 21, 2000. (Photo by Dan Krauss, The Associated Press)
United in sorrow (page 6)
Saying Goodbye
Friends and family eulogize cartoonist Charles Schulz
February 22, 2000
By Pamela J. Podger
San Francisco Chronicle
No one brought a security blanket big enough to comfort some 3,000 mourners who flocked to yesterday's memorial service for cartoonist Charles Schulz.
As Schulz and his strip bid adieu just hours apart earlier this month, the service in Santa Rosa was a touching goodbye to the artist whose half-century run of fanciful, true-grit characters and human insights touched so many hearts.
Tennis superstar Billie Jean King, cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, Schulz's family and close friends shared stories that had the audience alternately in tears and hooting with laughter. But the final words were Schulz's own about Charlie Brown as a light illuminated an empty place on the stage: "What a dirty trick. He never had the chance to kick the football."
Schulz's widow, Jeannie, said the world's most widely syndicated cartoonist was a humble man who did not realize how beloved his creations were until he decided to cap his inkwell in November.
"He could not know the extent of the impact he had made. I believe that's what these last months have been about," she said. "My comfort comes from knowing that he fully received the love and appreciation that poured out to him."
The timing of Schulz's death from complications of colon cancer was no coincidence, said Amy Johnson, one of Schulz's five children. "He was taken from this world to the next at the most sacred of moments for him because he earned it," she said.
Peanuts' lively cast of characters -- with their tales of small woes, triumphs and resolve -- touched nerves and reached intimate spaces. Schulz often said all his fears, insecurities and experiences were reflected in those four boxes. But he would eagerly draw Popeye or Mickey Mouse if a child requested those characters instead.
Guisewite, who draws the comic strip "Cathy," said Schulz sought her out from time to time for reassurance. One day, he called her when he could not think of any thing to draw.
"I said, `What are you talking about, you're Charles Schulz!' " she said. "What he did for me that day he did for millions of people in zillions of ways. He gave everyone in the world characters who knew exactly how we felt."
King described Schulz's efforts at raising the profile of women's sports and how he often asked about her desire to win, which she compared with his passion for drawing. "He would probe and probe and probe ... we talked about how anxious we both are," said King, who wore a Snoopy pin. "It was the Lucy in him, asking me. A little psychology here."
His son Monte Schulz wrapped up the 2 1/2-hour ceremony. "I saw my father admired by millions and knew not one revered him more than I. Now our dialogue is finished, the bell is rung, and he is gone."
Always the athlete, Schulz, 77, skated two laps around the Redwood Empire Ice Arena on February 11 and died in his sleep about 9:45 the following night at home in Santa Rosa, with his wife by his side. He was buried Wednesday in a private service in Sebastopol.
About 2,500 people -- including Hallmark Cards representatives, United Feature Syndicate officials, senior skaters and local luminaries -- filled the seating and stood in the lobby at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts. An additional 500 people watched the ceremony on a big-screen television in the parking lot.
After the service, the crowd ate the "Peanuts gang" fare of root beer and chocolate chip cookies. Three British World War II-era fighter planes flew over in a missing-man formation, the middle plane trailing spaghettilike strands of smoke.
Craig Schulz said his father's zest for his family, his years as a World War II machine-gunner in France and his strip were the three most important things in his life. "But growing up, Dad would always put down his pen to come out for a baseball game," he said.
Daughter Jill Schulz Transki said she knew most of the anecdotes recounted in the service. "It was a reminder that we all knew the same guy, he was who he was," she said.
A barber's son who hailed from St. Paul, Minnesota, Schulz brought his passion for skating to California. The ice rink inspired skaters, from those who sprawled on the ice on their fannies to others who later embarked on professional careers.
Carla Ericson, a professional figure skater for 16 years, said she took her first lesson at Schulz's rink at age 10. She grew up with Sparky's children, Jill and Monte, recalling sleepovers at their house and breakfast chats on life's lessons, which often became fodder for Schulz's strip. Her father, Walt, has been an official for 25 years of the Snoopy Senior Hockey Tournament.
"Sparky is an icon. Skating is my tribute to Sparky. If it wasn't for him, I would never have had the career I did," she said. "This is closure and a way of saying goodbye. It is sad, but this is really a celebration of his life."
Mark Leach of Rohnert Park skipped work yesterday to attend the ceremony. "I just couldn't not be here today," he said. "Schulz is a genius. It shows you don't have to save the world, you just have to do one thing well, and it makes a difference."
No strip has been more successful than "Peanuts," appearing in some 2,600 newspapers, reaching an audience of more than 355 million people in 75 countries and in 21 languages.
The "Peanuts" phenomenon spread to TV specials, movies, a wide variety of merchandise, stage productions, blimps, parade floats, Super Bowl shows and even moon missions.
"Peanuts Gallery" Suite Evokes the Spirit of Schulz
February 22, 2000
By John Henken
The Los Angeles Times
It was not planned this way, of course, but with the recent death of beloved cartoonist Charles Schulz, the opening of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's new family concerts series became something of a valediction.
The climax of the program, Sunday afternoon at the Alex Theater in Glendale, was the local premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's "Peanuts Gallery," a little suite of genuinely engaging musical portraits.
Not that there was much very somber about the event. Zwilich did give Linus and Charlie Brown some gently pensive and lyrical music, but elsewhere the spirit was smart and sassy, particularly in Schroeder's Beethoven sendup and Snoopy's flamboyant samba.
* * *
Commissioned by Carnegie Hall and given its premiere by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, "Peanuts Gallery" has readily accessible surface attractions and a sophisticated inner musical life.
LACO music director Jeffrey Kahane gave the West Coast premiere of the piece two seasons ago with his Santa Rosa Symphony, of which Schulz was a longtime supporter. He introduced it here with amiable personal anecdotes and led a limber, gleaming performance from the piano, a featured but by no means predominating instrument.
At midpoint Kahane did test the concentration of his child-filled audience and the Alex's acoustics with a nobly rapt, soft and inward account of the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata, a program addition in memory of Schulz.
He brought wandering attentions back into the fold, however, with a bright, sharply inflected reading of the Rondo finale from Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2.
* * *
The concert began with a sprightly, well-energized reading of Britten's "Simple Symphony." It is hard to fault either the performances or Kahane's conversational introductions, but the agenda and pace left the "Peanuts" payoff long delayed, to the point that some families were exiting as it started.
Enough remained to roar approval of the encore however -- a reprise of the "Peanuts Gallery" samba, this time with a dancing costumed Snoopy -- and to stay after in their seats asking questions of Kahane and Co.
The day Sparky interviewed the columnist
February 24, 2000
By Lowell Cohn
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
In the strictest sense this isn't a sports column.
It's about the only time I met Charles Schulz, which happened to be a few years ago at his favorite hangout, the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. I was writing a column about the Snoopy Senior World Hockey Tournament, and I was told Schulz would make time for me. Not that there was anything remarkable about that. He would make time for anyone.
I was directed to meet him in the coffee shop of the ice arena, and sure enough, when I got there I saw him sitting alone at a table. He wore a turtleneck, and his white hair was combed back from his face, and with his straight nose and elegant manner he might have been a U.S. senator on vacation. But of course, he was so much more important than a senator.
He invited me to sit down, after first saying, "Call me Sparky." So, sure, I called him Sparky, but it felt weird. It was like meeting FDR for the first time and calling him Frank.
Then the interview began. Except that I wasn't interviewing Schulz. He was interviewing me. His voice was soft, but he was persistent. He wanted to know everything about me -- where I was from, when I came to The Press Democrat, why I write about sports. He was actually interested. It wasn't one of those perfunctory conversations in which the other guy goes through the motions of appearing to be polite but keeps checking his watch under the table and yawning behind his hand.
Schulz listened for a while, and then he said, "Where do you get your ideas for columns?"
I said there's usually lots of sports news I can write about. He nodded his head.
"Do you ever not have an idea?" he said.
"It feels like I don't have an idea about once a week," I told him.
He laughed. "Me, too," he said.
He thought for a moment. "And what do you do when you don't have an idea?" he asked.
"Well, that's a good question," I said. "Usually I can't sleep if I go to bed without an idea. I toss and turn and feel crummy, and my wife tells me to knock it off."
"Me, too," he said. "What happens next?"
"I wake up early with my heart pounding," I told him, "and I search the newspapers and listen to the radio to see if anything happened that I can write about."
"And what if nothing happened?" he asked.
"Then I trust in the Good Lord," I said.
"Me, too," he said again. And we both got a good laugh at the similarity of our experiences -- two guys who made a living with our pens, his for drawing, mine for scribbling. Forget that he earned something like $30 million a year, while the total tonnage of my income for my entire lifetime will be a fraction of just one of his years.
That day we were a couple of pens for hire talking about our bad sleeping habits.
As we talked, it became clear to me that Schulz and I were similar in another way. It wasn't just the having to meet deadlines. It was the anxiety, the insecurity that we shared. And I was kind of amazed, really. If anything, he seemed more nervous about the whole thing than I did. I wanted to reassure him, say something like, "Sparky, you really are the all-time greatest in your line of work. You never will run out of ideas." But who was I to reassure that superstar?
So instead we talked about his drawing hand, which wasn't as steady as it used to be. He picked up a fork to show me how he had to hold his pen. He propped one hand on another, and his hand grew steady. He seemed pleased with that.
Then he told me about his reading habits. He said he was always reading three or four books at the same time, but in an interesting way. "I leave books near several chairs in my house," he told me. "Whenever I sit down, I pick up a book and start reading."
Later, after we had toured the ice arena and discussed the Snoopy Tournament (this year's is July 16-23), he took me to the Snoopy Gallery and Gift Shop and showed me around. He seemed proud, as he should have been. He'd created an entire world in his comic strip, maybe the most recognizable world that any artist created in the entire 20th century.
"I want to ask you a question," he said. "Why don't they give a Pulitzer Prize for comic strips?"
I was stumped on that one, mostly because I had no idea they didn't award one. Schulz waited for my answer. I could see this omission by the Pulitzer Committee upset him. And I wanted to make him feel better. I really did. So I said, "You know what, Sparky, you're too good for the Pulitzer Prize."
That seemed to cheer him up. He walked me to my car. He said he'd enjoyed the time we spent together. Then he said, "My wife and I would like to have dinner with you and your wife."
I assured him I would phone. And I meant it, too.
But deadlines and life got in the way, and I put it off.
And now I have something to regret.
Preaching "Peanuts"
A minister who turned the parables of Charlie Brown's gang into a book believes the pint-sized characters offer big-time insight into spirituality
February 26, 2000
By Maureen Hayden
Evansville Courier & Press
In his last conversation with his old friend Charles Schulz a few weeks ago, Presbyterian minister Robert Short found himself listening to the creator of "Peanuts" talk about Job, the Old Testament believer who endured much suffering, yet sustained his faith in God.
Short knew the 77-year-old Schulz had been enduring his own pain battling colon cancer, but he didn't realize his beloved friend was just a week away from death, on Feb. 13.
For Short, chatting about the Scriptures with a man whose nickname was "Sparky" and whose simple drawings for 50 years created millions of "Peanuts" fans didn't seem odd.
"He was always pulling some passage out of the Bible and tossing it into the conversation," said Short, whose friendship with Schulz spanned more than three decades.
"He wasn't pious about it. He'd be at a dinner party or on the golf course, quote a passage from the Bible and say with a laugh, `What do you think about that?' "
Schulz's mix of good humor and strong faith was what appealed to Short more than 35 years ago, when the minister set out to use Schulz's comic strip characters to offer spiritual insight to a secular audience. The result was "The Gospel According to `Peanuts,' " a surprise best-seller that revealed how some of the most significant teachings of the Bible could be found coming out of the mouths of Charlie Brown and the rest of the "Peanuts" gang.
First published in 1965, the book was reissued this month by publisher Westminster John Knox Press in Louisville, Kentucky.
The publisher and the author believe there is a whole new audience for the book, which sold more than 10 million copies the first time out.
"In 1965, the juxtaposition of a comic strip and a serious theological discussion was seen as avant garde, even risky because of its potential to offend," said Short. "I think the shock value has worn off, but the message remains the same: that in these comic strip characters we find the essence of what it means to be human and the grace of God."
Short is now pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Monticello, Arkansas, where he lives with his wife, Ellen Coale Short, an Evansville native.
He first started reading the "Peanuts" strip as a seminary student some 40 years ago.
"What we had to read as seminary students was often these very dry and difficult tomes, certainly without much humor in them. But I was also finding serious theology in `Peanuts.' "
He began collecting his favorite ones and eventually turned it into a kind of traveling slide show he took to churches. He wrote a magazine article on the theology of the "Peanuts" gang in 1964, arguing that Schulz often used his characters to tell parables, much like Jesus does in the New Testament.
Soon after, he turned the article's thesis into a book. In it, Short explains some of Christianity's basic beliefs, such as original sin and salvation, and uses selected "Peanuts" strips to illustrate his points.
Early in the book, Short reminds readers that Schulz knew he was stepping into perilous territory with a strip featuring the blanket-hugging Linus and his know-it-all older sister, Lucy.
"Do you ever pray, Lucy?" Linus asks.
"That's kind of a personal question, isn't it?" Lucy responds. "Are you trying to start an argument?"
Flaring with anger, Lucy then begins screaming at Linus: "I SUPPOSE YOU THINK YOU'RE SOMEBODY PRETTY SMART, DON'T YOU?"
A terrified Linus flees, seeking solace in his blanket, thumb and good friend Charlie Brown.
"You're right," he tells Charlie. "Religion is a very touchy subject."
The book also includes insight from Schulz's own spiritual journey. His Christian faith was solidified while he was a soldier during World War II. After the war, he joined the Church of God, based in Anderson, Indiana, and later began teaching Sunday school.
Schulz was intentional about using his strip to reveal the poignantly funny reality of human nature.
"... (If) you do not say anything in a cartoon, you might as well not draw it at all," Schulz told an interviewer in 1963. "Humor which does not say anything is worthless humor. So I contend that a cartoonist must be given a chance to do his own preaching."
Short contends that the preaching Schulz did best was in the strips that were parables, stories that posed a question and offered just the suggestion of a solution.
"Peanuts" protagonist Charlie Brown is often caught in the parable, to his dismay. When he wails to Lucy, in one strip, about his perpetually losing baseball team, he laments: "Everything I do, I lose."
Lucy, in her best imitation of an armchair psychologist, tells him: "Look at it this way, Charlie Brown ... We learn more from losing than we do from winning."
"THAT MAKES ME THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!!" Charlie screams back.
The appeal of Schulz, said Short, is "that he gives us an extremely honest and realistic view of ourselves in these characters. He's taken the basic questions and anxieties and perplexities of human situations and translated them into pint-size, child-like proportions. He's brought it down to a level where anybody can get it."
Schulz's work also won the affection of his peers. On May 27, fellow cartoonists plan to dedicate their strips that day to Schulz. Expect to see a host of comic strip characters pay homage to the man.
"Peanuts" Comic Finale Will Run Again in Tribune
February 27, 2000
By Shinika Sykes
The Salt Lake Tribune
A number of readers urged The Salt Lake Tribune to publish the final Sunday "Peanuts" comic strip once again. Editor James E. Shelledy has agreed to do so. The strip is scheduled to run in the Sunday Comics on March 5.
Most newspapers knew there would be heightened interest in that strip, but "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz's death -- on the very eve his final strip was to be published -- made it even more of a collector's item.
In tributes to Schulz, the finale began showing up on television, magazines and other newspapers, and some "Peanuts" fans noticed The Tribune's version did not include two small panels and a larger title that was drawn by Schulz as a standard option.
Most of those who called or wrote me were unaware of a practice in the comic industry where a newspaper can choose not to run the so-called "throwaway" panels. These panels do not affect the message, story or gag. And, more importantly, this practice allows more space for other comics.
That said, The Tribune, like The (Portland) Oregonian, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, The Sacramento Bee and several other dailies, did not issue a timely advisory to the contractor who put together the Sunday Comics to keep all of the panels for the final strip.
So, The Tribune has responded to readers' requests for a reprint and will rerun the strip, this time with the first two panels. The paper also made 50 photo reproductions of the strip available, which are more durable than newsprint. A full-color reproduction can be had for $3.50 each, including shipping cost. They are available by mail request only and on a first-come, first-served basis. You may send your request along with a check made payable to The Tribune.
Mail to: Comic Strip Request
The Salt Lake Tribune
P.O. Box 867
Salt Lake City, UT 84110.
But remember to watch for the "free" rerun next Sunday.
Ashland woman fondly remembers Schulz
Lisa Brockway recalls the "Peanuts" cartoonist as a gentle man
February 28, 2000
The Oregonian
MEDFORD -- When a car pulls into the driveway at her childhood home in Santa Rosa, California, Lisa Brockway half expects a gentle fellow with an easy smile to slide out from behind the wheel.
But the Ashland resident realizes that Charles Schulz, the man she knew fondly as Sparky, will never again be there to make her three young children laugh.
"We're still in a little bit of shock," she said, from Santa Rosa. "It's hard to believe that he's actually gone."
Brockway, 39, is the stepdaughter of Charles "Sparky" Schulz, the artistic father of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus and the rest of the "Peanuts" gang.
She and her family were in Santa Rosa last week attending a memorial service for Schulz, who died Feb. 12, the eve of the day the last original "Peanuts" comic strip appeared in Sunday newspapers. He was 77. A private funeral was held earlier in Santa Rosa. Schulz was buried in nearby Sebastopol.
Schulz's strip appeared in 2,600 newspapers, reaching an estimated 355 million readers daily in 75 countries. United Features Syndicate will continue to publish reruns.
Brockway was 12 when her mother, Jeannie Forsyth, married Schulz in 1974, a marriage that was to last 26 years. In addition to Brockway and her sister, he had five children from a previous marriage. He also had 18 grandchildren.
"Out of respect for his five (biological) children, I always referred to him as my stepfather," Brockway said. "Sparky was always there for me, but he was also respectful of my dad's place in my life. He didn't try to take my father's place.
"He had a very gentle and understanding way about him."
Schulz was diagnosed with colon cancer and then suffered a series of small strokes during emergency abdominal surgery in November. After consulting with his family, he announced his retirement shortly afterward.
Although Schulz received countless international awards over the years, he was taken by surprise by fans' outpouring of concern before his death, Brockway said.
"Right after the strokes and surgery, after he had decided to retire, what I saw in his face and heard in his voice was almost disbelief at the outpouring of love and appreciation he received from people," she said. "He was in the hospital reading the cards and everything. It amazed him that people were so moved."
The Sparky she knew enjoyed a simple life and seldom strayed far from his drawing board.
"That was what made him happy," she said. "Of course, he also loved his dogs."
After all, Schulz was the fellow credited with the term "Happiness is a warm puppy."
Cartoonists from around the world attended his memorial service, she said, noting that he had encouraged many over the years.
"One went to his studio, put his hand on the drawing board where Sparky worked and cried."
Although Schulz is missed by his family, his passing on the eve of the last comic strip had a prophetic quality, she observed.
"He died three months to the day after he found out he had cancer," Brockway said. "We never expected it to happen that quick.
