Donna Wold, the inspiration for the Little Red-Haired Girl in the Peanuts comic strip, holds her stuffed Snoopy on January 2, 2000, in her Minneapolis home. (The Associated Press photo/Star Tribune/Ann Heisenfelt)
And responds...(page 8)...
More news from the media world...
GAME'S OVER, CHARLIE BROWN: TODAY, THE FAREWELL
Monday, January 3, 2000
By Andrew Quinn
Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO—Aaaaaaaaugh!
After five decades of watching his kite get eaten by trees, his baseball games collapse in disarray, and his dog Snoopy walk away with the best lines, Charlie Brown and his gang say farewell today in the final new "Peanuts" comic strip in daily newspapers.
Y2K was bad. But this? This is a real crisis.
"This changes the whole fabric of my existence," said "Dilbert" cartoon creator Scott Adams, who attributes his career as a cartoonist to Charles Schulz, the retiring mastermind behind the "Peanuts" gang.
"He's the most significant and the best cartoonist of our age, which means ever," Adams said.
Last month Schulz, 77, announced plans to retire from drawing the world's most widely syndicated comic strip to concentrate on his treatment for colon cancer.
In his final strip [see Page C11], depicting Snoopy atop his doghouse writing a letter--Schulz bids friends, colleagues and readers adieu, thanking them for allowing him "the fulfillment of my childhood ambition" for almost 50 years.
"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy . . . how can I ever forget them?" he writes.
Schulz's quiet farewell is typically elegant. A gentle man with an easy touch, Schulz always has said only he would draw "Peanuts." That means that today's strip and a final Sunday comic planned for Feb. 13 will mark the last new "Peanuts"--perhaps ever.
"What we are hearing from lots of papers is that they don't want it to stop," said Mary Anne Grimes, a spokeswoman for United Feature Syndicate, the cartoon's distributor. "But he wants to concentrate on getting better. . . . We all must respect that."
For those newspapers that want it, United Feature will offer reruns of strips starting with those that first appeared in 1974. [The Washington Post will run the old strips until Feb. 13 and is asking readers to call the comics hot line at 202-334-4775 to comment on whether to continue with "Peanuts" repeats or to use a new strip.]
Charlie Brown's saga as a great American loser has become, perhaps fittingly, a great American success. "Peanuts" runs daily in more than 2,600 newspapers around the world, reaching 355 million readers in 75 countries and 21 languages. There have been more than 50 animated "Peanuts" specials, and fans have snapped up more than 300 million copies of some 1,400 "Peanuts" books.
It's an empire that generates more than $1 billion per year in global retail sales.
At the Santa Rosa, California, studio where Schulz has written, drawn, inked and lettered each and every "Peanuts" comic for most of his 50-year career, no
special events were planned to mark today's farewell.
Paige Braddock, a close Schulz aide, said yesterday that the cartoonist was resting.
"I think he's just really focused on the treatments that he's getting for the cancer," Braddock said.
But she said she noticed something new in her boss--a willingness to discuss potential ideas for a new video.
"I don't think he would come back to the daily strip, but I don't think he wouldn't have other outlets, like books or videos," Braddock said. "It's not like the characters just die. He's still thinking about them."
DRAWING TO A CLOSE
Monday, January 3, 2000
By Jim Beckerman
The Hackensack, New Jersy, Record
It's the end of an era, Charlie Brown. After 50 years of lost baseball games, tangled kites, and dogfights with the Red Baron, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the world-famous "Peanuts" gang are saying goodbye on the comic pages of today's newspapers.
"Unfortunately, I am no longer able to maintain the schedule demanded by a daily comic strip, therefore I am announcing my retirement," writes cartoonist
Charles M. Schulz on his last daily panel, next to a simple drawing of Snoopy.
Schulz, 77, recently diagnosed with colon cancer, has a clause in his contract stating that no one else can draw the strip.
Starting Tuesday, The Record, along with most of the 2,600 newspapers that carry the world's most popular comic strip, will begin running old "Peanuts"
installments, dating from 1974. The date was selected because most of the strip's current cast of characters was in place by then.
In the Sunday comics section, "Peanuts" will last a little longer; Schulz has stockpiled new Sunday episodes to last through Feb. 13.
Ninety-five percent of the papers that carry "Peanuts" will continue to run the older strips, according to United Feature Syndicate, which distributes the strip.
"It's the biggest feature we have, and it's not just ending on Monday," said syndicate spokeswoman Mary Anne Grimes.
The fact that most newspapers are willing to run old "Peanuts" rather than no "Peanuts" is a reflection of the unique status of Schulz's beloved characters.
"These characters are friends of mine," says cartoonist Mort Walker ("Beetle Bailey"), a friend of Schulz, who echoes the feelings of many around the world.
"I look in on them every day, and all of a sudden, they're gone. It's a real loss."
Since they were introduced in the 1950s, hapless Charlie Brown, crabby Lucy, philosophical Linus, Beethoven-worshipping Schroeder, madcap
dog-of-all-trades Snoopy, and the rest of Schulz's disarming small fry have become more than just household names in 70 countries.
In the Louvre, their likenesses hang alongside Da Vincis and Rodins. In 1969, the capsule and lunar landing module of Apollo 10 were christened Charlie Brown and Snoopy. In a Presbyterian church in Buffalo, New York, Schroeder and his toy piano are immortalized in stained glass. Schulz's characters have been
the basis for TV specials, feature films, Broadway musicals, Thanksgiving Day parade floats, theological studies, toys, hit songs, even a concerto. For five decades, "Peanuts" has been the comic strip against which all others were measured.
"You never expected it to stop, because it went on so consistently for 50 years," says Clark Gesner, composer of the hit show "You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown," recently revived on Broadway.
Gesner has more than a sentimental interest in the passing of "Peanuts." The fate of Schulz's comic strip is very much tied in with the fate of his 1967 show,
which gets more than 800 productions a year -- making it one of the two or three most-produced musicals in history.
"I've been holding my breath for 30 years," Gesner says. "What if something happens to the strip? We're kind of based on him."
Charlie Brown, the lovable loser in the zigzag shirt, was introduced in 1950 by Charles Monroe ("Sparky") Schulz, a St. Paul, Minnesota, native whose memories of grade-school humiliations fueled much of the humor that made "Peanuts" unique. "Good ol' Charlie Brown," says Shermy, one of Schulz's four original
characters, in that first strip on Oct. 2, 1950. "How I hate him!"
As "Peanuts" caught on, Linus' security blanket, Lucy's psychiatric booth, Snoopy's multiple personalities, and Charlie Brown's endless failures began to
seem a perfect mirror for an age of anxiety.
"It's hard to estimate [Schulz's] influence," says cartoonist Robb Armstrong, whose strip "Jump Start" contains a tribute to Schulz this week.
"It's like oxygen; it's everywhere," Armstrong says.
Though "Peanuts" had become a marketing phenomenon by the late 1960s, Gesner points out that unlike today's fads, it was driven by love, rather than money. Gesner, then a struggling Princeton graduate, wrote the songs that became "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" out of sheer love for the strip, rather than any schemes for cashing in. His main concern was to please Schulz.
"He liked it, and was flattered by the close attention I paid to the strip," Gesner recalls. "It was so personal. It could never happen that way today."
Likewise, the TV cartoons that began in 1965 with "A Charlie Brown Christmas" were produced with quality, not money, in mind. Hence the then-controversial choices of having jazz as soundtrack music (Vince Guaraldi's score has since become classic), the absence of a laugh track, and using untrained kids, rather than professional actors, for the voices.
Schulz "cared enough about his characters that he didn't want to compromise them," says Stephen Charla, curator of the International Museum of Cartoon
Art in Florida.
That integrity weighed in his decision not to let anyone else continue the strip -- unusual in a field where ghostwriters and artists can prolong a popular strip for a century or more ("The Katzenjammer Kids," still running, began in 1897). In the world of comic books, only "Beetle Bailey's" Walker has drawn his own creation longer -- and even he has help from his sons.
"He decided that no one else could continue the strip," Walker says of Schulz. "And the way his health deteriorated, he couldn't do it himself. I don't think he
had a choice."
PEANUTS' READERS LOSE SECURITY BLANKET
Monday, January 3, 2000
Steve Rubenstein
The San Francisco Chronicle
There is no good grief today, only grief.
Charlie Brown, who will never smooch the red-haired girl nor get his kite out of the tree, is returning to the ink bottle.
Today, cartoonist Charles Schulz is ending his daily cartoon strip that charmed and comforted a nation through five mercurial decades. Sunday strips, all drawn in advance, continue through February 13. The Chronicle will begin running vintage daily strips tomorrow.
"Dear Friends," writes Schulz in a letter to readers that appears in today's final Peanuts panel. "I have been grateful over the years for the . . . wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip." Unlike the strips that ran last week and earlier, today's was drawn after the cartoonist decided to
retire.
Chronicle readers, who feel like the football has been pulled out from under them, have been inconsolable ever since Schulz, 77, announced last month that he was retiring because of colon cancer. Invited to write in and share their thoughts, readers were every bit as philosophical and melancholy as Linus.
"Peanuts made neuroses and unrequited love respectable," wrote Betty Deitch.
"I have saved many strips over the years," wrote Melissa Batavia. "They are now all yellow and crumbling, but they still make me smile."
"The main reason (I subscribe) to The San Francisco Chronicle is because of Peanuts," wrote Yohanes Sulaiman of Hayward.
Tom Bertino recalled the day in the late 1960s when he spent a few hours with Schulz in his Santa Rosa home. He was a 9-year-old boy and a would-be cartoonist whose parents had called Schulz ("to his listed phone number," Bertino said) and asked for a meeting.
"He seemed no different than the other adults I knew, except he showed more attentiveness and patience," Bertino wrote. "He answered every question I posed to him in detail. . . . He revealed his secret to me (in) his personal warmth, and the way he took an interest in the future dreams of a very young and very total stranger."
Bertino, who went on to become the animation director for Industrial Light and Magic, said it was the "encouragement and advice that Schulz gave so freely which helped me on my way in life."
Schulz, a barber's son from Minnesota, began his strip in 1950 with a pair of characters, Charlie Brown and Linus, named after two of his art teachers. At first, only seven newspaper carried the strip.
Over the years, the moon-faced young people and black-eared beagle turned up everywhere -- not only in 2,600 newspapers but in lunch boxes, sweatshirts, packaged cupcakes, life insurance ads, TV specials, blimps, amusement parks and an exhibit at the Louvre.
If Peanuts was a $1 billion-a-year business, no one could tell from its creator. Schulz breakfasted in an ice rink coffee shop, answered his own fan mail and never, ever employed an assistant to help draw the pictures or come up with ideas.
ome of those fans who got personal replies to their letters still recall how much they meant.
"When I was 8 years old, I wrote a fan letter telling him how much I liked Peanuts," said Will Weigler. "He took the time to answer with a personal note. He wrote that he had fun drawing the strip and that he hoped I would continue to enjoy it even when I grew up.
"I have enjoyed it, Mr. Schulz (and) I will surely miss it."
Chronicle readers were not too distraught, however, to offer some gentle wisdom of their own.
"(For) your final strip, please don't allow (Charlie Brown) to kick the football," wrote Rafael Rodriguez Jr. "It would be a grave injustice to Lucy."
HAPPINESS WAS ... 50 YEARS OF PEANUTS
As comic classic draws to a close, ink-lings of what made it timeless
January 3, 2000
By David Hinckley
New York Daily News
If your goal were to create a comic strip that would last almost 50 years, generate billions of dollars and become a household word in languages you couldn't even pronounce, you probably wouldn't start with characters who consistently ignored each other's feelings and spent their happiest moments
fantasizing about things they'd never have or be.
It sounds more like a ticket to therapy than fame and fortune. But it's pretty much the base on which Charles (Sparky) Schulz built "Peanuts," the comic strip that conquered the 20th century and will end with the dawn of the 21st.
Using a small cast of simply drawn characters, Schulz created a world that was both unique and universal. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and the rest of the "Peanuts" gang were kids with strong individual personalities and quirks passing through the ordinary rituals of childhood - going to school, playing ball,
feeding the dog, taking the big piece for themselves - in a way that encapsulated the insecurities, disappointments and occasional small joys that in the end add up to all of life.
You don't know this until you're a grownup, of course, which may be one reason grownups loved "Peanuts," even though no adult face ever appeared in the strip.
Exactly how Schulz did it, how he managed to embody both life's constant disappointment and the spirit's eternal hope, is a question raised frequently since he announced last month he's sending the strip into retirement.
The last daily "Peanuts" strip appears today, though there will be new Sunday strips through Feb. 13. The daily strips that appear starting tomorrow will be reruns from 1974, and the fact they don't feel jarringly different underscores the first of Schulz' strengths: consistency.
"That one person maintained this quality day in and day out for 50 years is almost impossible to imagine," says John Ficarra, editor of Mad magazine. Shifting to a TV-announcer voice, Ficarra adds: "It's what good comedy product should be."
Schulz "created characters people could relate to, who they thought of as friends," says Mort Walker, whose "Beetle Bailey" is one of the few strips to rival "Peanuts" for longevity. "Everyone relates to defeat. Every time Charlie Brown is rejected by the little red-headed girl, I think of myself in high school, walking the halls and people not saying 'Hi.' That's important when you're a kid. It stays with you."
"Schulz took adult problems and put them in the context of childhood, thereby showing us this is where those problems begin," says Ron Smith, author of several comedy books including "Who's Who in Comedy."
The original plan was for all this analysis to occur next summer, in preparation for the strip's 50th anniversary on Oct. 2, 2000. But on Nov. 13, Schulz was diagnosed with colon cancer and on Dec. 14, just past his 77th birthday, he announced he was ending the daily strip, though he will keep working on a series of television shows.
While Schulz has a legendary work ethic, and this is clearly not the way he would have chosen to leave, it gives him a chance to say goodbye.
Unlike some artists, Schulz has never let anyone else draw "Peanuts" - perhaps to underscore his repeated assurances that he did not see himself as the czar of a merchandising empire, but first and foremost as a comic-strip artist with an intensely personal vision.
"There's a lot of Sparky in the strip," says Walker. "We were at a cartoonists' meeting a while back and I made a suggestion I thought was pretty good. And Sparky got up and said, 'That's the dumbest idea I ever heard.' He came up to me later and said, 'Sorry, that was Lucy talking.'
"That's a big part of his success. His characters are based on real people, giving them a life you can't manufacture."
"Some years ago, these characters, particularly Snoopy, transcended the strip," says Ron Goulart, author of the book "The Funnies." "It's almost as if they became real."
That is to say, those simple drawings and simple gags added up to deceptively multidimensional characters. Anyone who thinks Charlie Brown is just a lovable loser misses the subtext.
"Charlie Brown is a loser and a winner at the same time," says Goulart. "He keeps going. He's not a whiny kind of loser."
"He keeps trying," says Walker. "He never caves in to failure."
Nor is that the only two-sided coin in "Peanuts," starting with the whole warm-and-fuzzy image it developed as a marketing phenomenon in the '60s.
"Happiness is a warm puppy," Lucy said one day, patting Snoopy, and Snoopy became the loyal pal, living only to serve comfort in the darkest storm.
Which, in fact, was nothing at all like Schulz' Snoopy, a dog who never bothered to learn his master's name.
"Snoopy is everything a kid is," says Ron Smith. "He's silly, he's a dreamer, he's selfabsorbed, he's easily resentful."
So how did he become America's Dog?
"That's Schulz's genius," says Smith. "When you think about what happens in this strip, kids never getting what they want, you realize how much it's about depression. But somehow Schulz made all that seem warm and cuddly."
Schulz would periodically tackle a serious issue. He did an angry series not long ago about sports memorabilia hustlers preying on kids. But most of the time his characters faced ordinary obstacles: homework, summer camp, late dinner.
This occasionally led to sequences that seemed below Schulz's standard - the bird Woodstock was a slight character, and Snoopy's desert-dwelling brother Spike came close to being so forlorn he made the reader uncomfortable - but considering Schulz did this for 49 years and three months, he maintained an
impressive level of creativity. He also did it with a leanness that other artists emulate or envy.
"Comic strips are an art a lot of people don't appreciate," says Walker. "The average reader spends seven seconds on a comic strip. You have to say everything in that time. And remember, before 'Peanuts' most kids in comic strips were just mean and mischievous. Schulz made them more than that."
His techniques included mingling his characters' fantasies with their real lives, and having kids (or dogs) talk like grownups, quoting the Bible or throwing in an adult phrase at a humorously incongruous moment.
"Both kids and grownups identify with 'Peanuts' characters," says Goulart. "It had only been around a few years when people started cutting it out and putting it on bulletin boards and refrigerator doors. Ultimately, I think the only cartoon characters you can compare 'Peanuts' to in this century are the Disneys, like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse."
"We had a lot of fun with Schulz and 'Peanuts' over the years," says Mad's Ficarra. "And he was always very gracious about it. He'd send us notes and suggestions. Not having 'Peanuts' will be a big loss."
Impossible Dreams
In the "Peanuts" comic strip, as in reality, most of the characters never get what they want. Here are a dozen loose ends that apparently will remain untied forever:
1. Unrequited Love I: Charlie Brown will never get a date with the Little Red-Headed Girl.
2. Snoopy's brother Spike, who talks to a cactus, will never find anyone in the desert who will talk back.
3. Lucy will never catch a fly ball. (Not that she cares.)
4. Unrequited Love II: Sally will never win the heart of Linus, her "Sweet Baboo."
5. Rerun will never get anyone to come out to play.
6. Snoopy will never defeat the Red Baron.
7. Charlie Brown will never successfully fly a kite.
8. Unrequited Love III: Lucy will never lure Schroeder away from his piano.
9. Peppermint Patty will never find a way to get passing grades without studying.
10. Charlie Brown will never win another game. (He did win one, it should be recorded, in 1993.)
11. Linus will never see the Great Pumpkin.
12. Unrequited Love IV: Peppermint Patty will never get the attention of the oblivious Charlie Brown.
CHARLES SCHULZ SAYS HE'LL DEARLY MISS 'PEANUTS'CHARACTERS
January 3, 2000
The Associate Press
SANTA ROSA, California -- The day before his last daily "Peanuts" comic strip was set to appear, cartoonist Charles Schulz had to stifle the tears.
"There are so many things I'm going to miss," Schulz told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat on Sunday, his voice crackling with emotion. "I've been thinking about this, and I think what I'm going to miss the most is Lucy holding the football and looking up and then the big bonk when Charlie comes down."
Schulz, 77, said some of his physical problems have left him at a loss, "but the big thing I lost is my job," he said with a laugh.
Monday's final farewell strip is primarily a text message signed by Schulz, wherein he thanks fans and editors for their love and support through "Peanuts"'s nearly 50-year run. In the corner is a drawing of Snoopy the beagle.
"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy ... how can I ever forget them," the strip reads.
Schulz has written, drawn, colored and lettered every "Peanuts" strip since its debut Oct. 2, 1950.
His beloved cast of characters appear in 2,600 newspapers, reaching an estimated 355 million readers daily in 75 countries.
His final Sunday strip will appear in newspapers Feb. 13.
'PEANUTS' FAREWELL: CARTOONISTS SAY GOODBYE TO ONE OF THEIR OWN
January 3, 2000
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO -- "AACK! I can't stand it!!," Cathy shouted on Monday as she read the last new daily "Peanuts" strip. Jason appeared as Pigpen in "Foxtrot," and in "Doonesbury," a drug-addled Zonker in a Charlie Brown-style zigzag shirt stretches out on Snoopy's doghouse.
Comic strip writers and political cartoonists are paying tribute in the best way they know to cancer-stricken Charles Schulz, who has retired the beloved comic strip he alone wrote, drew, colored and lettered for nearly 50 years.
"A shy local boy puts pen to paper, not knowing he will become the most successful and beloved cartoonist of all time," types Snoopy in a drawing by Kirk Anderson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. "He raises the cartoon to high art; brings psychology, philosophy and theology into the comics; changes pop culture forever, gives the world characters as allegorical as Shakespeare's ...
"I hope this has a happy ending!" Snoopy then thinks, his mouth a worried squiggle.
Similarly poignant farewells have come from all corners for Schulz, 77, who is undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer diagnosed in November.
"Although Schulz would say the very notion is preposterous and grandiose, he completely revolutionized the art form, deepening it, filling it with possibility, giving permission to all who followed to write from the heart and intellect," "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau wrote last month in The Washington Post.
Many of the 2,600 newspapers that carry his work have devoted pages to the "good grief!" of their readers, and many played Monday's final daily strip on the front page.
"An era ends today," wrote the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Monumental," was how that paper's editor, Martin Kaiser, described the news of Schulz' retirement.
"Good night, Charlie Brown," was the headline in Monday's Tampa Tribune, which also played the strip on A1.
"He meant more to the public than just an artist who put out a funny strip," said Pat Mitchell, the Tribune's senior editor for presentation. ``He had enough impact to warrant the front page."
A final new Sunday strip will run on Feb. 13. After that, United Feature Syndicate will publish "Peanuts" reprints beginning with strips from 1974, a year chosen in part because by then, all the major characters had been introduced.
"There are so many things I'm going to miss," Schulz told his hometown paper, the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, on Sunday. "I've been thinking about this, and I think what I'm going to miss the most is Lucy holding the football and looking up and then the big bonk when Charlie comes down."
Schulz will get a lifetime achievement award on May 27 at the National Cartoonists Society convention in New York. "We hope he'll recover health-wise to the point he can join us," said the group's spokesman, Chip Beck.
Schulz, known as "Sparky," did groundbreaking work, but he was far too humble to realize it at the time, Beck said.
"I think cartoon strips before 'Peanuts' made you look at the human condition, but they didn't necessarily make you look at yourself," he said. "With the 'Peanuts,' you felt like it was me, or maybe your sister. You could identify with their anxieties, their angst, their frustrations. It was never a cruel strip, and yet it still conveyed that life isn't always smooth."
Many cartoonists have done wistful takes on classic "Peanuts" strips in recent weeks.
"The Cartoonist is out," reads the sign on Lucy's empty psychiatrist's booth in a somber panel by Randy Bish of the Tribune-Review in Greensburg, Pa., where a despondent Charlie Brown says "Good Grief" as he wanders off.
"Rats!" says Charlie Brown, dragging a bat as he heads for the showers in a darkened, empty baseball stadium in a panel by Mike Thompson, editorial cartoonist for the Detroit Free Press.
The whole Peanuts gang crowds into the picture drawn by The Miami Herald's Jim Morin as Lucy waits with the football. "I'll hold the ball, Charlie Brown, and you come running up and kick it ... Charlie? Charlie Brown?"
"...SIGH..." is all Lucy says as she kneels alone in the drawing of Jim Borgman of The Cincinnati Enquirer.
But Lucy finally allows Charlie to kick the football in the tribute drawn by Bob Englehardt, a political cartoonist for The Hartford Courant.
"I don't know if it's what Sparky wanted. It's what I wanted to see," Englehardt said Monday. "He's a great source of inspiration to me. In the past 12 months I've still been cutting out strips and taping them to my drawing board."
The political cartoons described here can be found at www.cagle.com, a Web site put together by Daryl Cagle, president of the National Cartoonists Society.
LOCAL WOMAN INSPIRED 'PEANUTS' CHARACTER
Schulz's 'Old Flame' Was Model For Charlie Brown's Love
January 3, 2000
MINNEAPOLIS -- As the last daily installment of the comic strip "Peanuts" ran in newspapers Monday, a local woman remembers fondly a romance from her youth that later made its way into the world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
The romance was between "Peanuts" creator and St. Paul native Charles Schulz -- then a young cartoonist -- and a young accountant, Donna Wold.
"As he would have to walk by my desk, he would leave little drawings," Donna Wold said. "I would come in the morning and there it was."
More than 50 years ago, it started as a crush while both were at the Minneapolis Art Instruction School. This was long before "Peanuts" and the gang made their debut, WCCO-TV reported.
Schulz recently announced he will stop drawing the strip in order to concentrate on getting well after a bout with cancer.
Schulz and Donna Wold dated for a couple of years, but she eventually turned down his proposal of marriage.
He had called her his little red-haired girl and he eventually drew her just that way, WCCO-TV reported.
Ever since, Charlie Brown has carried on Schulz's elusive quest for the love of the red-haired girl.
"It really has been fun," Donna Wold said. "I've enjoyed it."
Donna Wold said she though Charlie Brown's quest for the nameless girl was something everyone could relate to.
"I think that was his plan," she said. "That's why she never had a name, so everybody could do that."
"I really didn't believe she was the inspiration until he came right out and said she was. (Called) her by name," said Donna's husband, Allan Wold. "It really did hit home, that he really felt bad about losing her."
Schulz has kept in touch from time to time. He even signed comic strips he sent to Donna, "with love."
Donna Wold said her husband has been a very good sport about this. She said that he won the heart of the real red-haired girl. The couple, who lives in south Minneapolis, have been married for almost 50 years.
In related news, cartoonists paid tribute to the "Peanuts" creator Monday.
In "Cathy," the title character shouts "AACK! I can't stand it!!" as she reads the last new daily "Peanuts" strip.
In "Doonesbury," Zonker in a Charlie Brown-style zigzag shirt stretches out on Snoopy's doghouse.
In the St. Paul Pioneer Press, editorial cartoonist Kirk Anderson drew a picture of Snoopy typing a story about Schulz's life.
