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He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Dena and Carl Schulz. His nickname "Sparky" was given by his uncle, after the horse Spark Plug in the Barney Google comic strip.
He attended St. Paul's Richard Gordon Elementary School, where he skipped two grades. As a result, he was the youngest in his class when he attended St. Paul Central High years later, which may have been the reason why he was so shy and isolated as a young teenager. After his mother died in February, 1943, he was drafted into the army and sent to Camp Campbell in Kentucky. He was then shipped to Germany two years later to fight in World War II. After leaving the army in 1945Events January January 5 The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland. January 7 British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge. January 12 World War II:, he took a job as an art teacher at Art Instruction Inc. , which he attended before he was drafted. There he met Yesterdays creator Frank Wing . They became close friends, with Wing taking a mentor role in Schulz's life.
First published by Robert Ripley in his Ripley's Believe It or Not!Ripley's Believe It or Not is a comic strip featuring unusual, hard-to-believe facts from around the world. The cartoon was conceived and drawn by Robert Ripley . It later became a radio program, a television show, and a chain of museums. Robert Ripley Ro, then in a series of chronicles, The Saturday Evening PostThere have been many publications called the Saturday Evening Post several were/are local British newspapers. The Saturday Evening Post was also a weekly magazine published in the United States from August 4, 1821 to February 8, 1969. For much of that per, his first regular comic strip, Li'l Folks was published in 1947Events January January 1 British mines nationalized January 1 Nigeria gains limited autonomy January 1 The Canadian Citizenship Act went into effect January 3 Proceedings of the United States Congress are televised for the first time. January 10 United Na by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. (It was in this strip that Charlie BrownThis article is about Charlie Brown the lead character in the Peanuts comic strip. There is a separate article about Charlie Brown, the member of the hip-hop crew Leaders of the New School. There is also a Charles Brown blues singer, and aviator Charles B first appeared, as well as a dogThis article discusses the domestic dog. For other members of the dog family, see Canidae. The dog is a canine omnivorous mammal that has been domesticated for somewhere between 14,000 and 150,000 years. In those millennia, the dog has developed into hund that looked much like SnoopySnoopy is the name of Charlie Brown's pet beagle in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Born on the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, Snoopy started out as just a dog, but eventually evolved into perhaps the strip's most dynamic character. Character Snoopy first m). In 1950 he approached the United Features Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. This strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time.
He put a lot of his own life into Peanuts' main character, Charlie Brown. For example:
Schulz was married twice. He married his first wife, Joyce Halverson , in 1951. They had five children, but divorced in 1972. He later married Jean Forsyth Clyde in 1973, with whom he was married for the remainder of his life.
Schulz's father died in 1966 while visiting him, the same year his studio in Sebastopol, California, burnt down.
Schulz was for many years of his adult life a member of the United Methodist Church and remained part of that church to the day of his death, although in a short 1999 interview he described himself as having gradually turned to the philosophy of Secular Humanism. Because themes and dialogue in Peanuts were in harmony with certain basics of Christian theology, a paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, was written by Robert L. Short . It was a bestseller for a time in the 1960s.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years without interruption and had appeared in over 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. In November 1999 Schulz had a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized to his stomach. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he couldn't read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999, at the age of 77. This was difficult for Schulz, and he was quoted as saying "I never dreamed that this would happen to me. I always had the feeling that I would stay with the strip until I was in my early eighties, or something like that. But all of sudden it's gone. It's been taken away from me. I did not take it away. This was taken away from me."
The last original strip ran on February 13, 2000. Schulz had died at 9:45 p.m. the night before in Santa Rosa, California of a heart attack. As part of his will, Schulz had requested that the Peanuts characters remain as authentic as possible and that no new comic strips based on them be drawn. To date his wishes have been honored, although reruns of the strip are still being syndicated to newspapers. He is interred in Pleasant Hills Cemetery, in Sebastopol, California.
On August 17, 2002, the Charles M. Schulz Museum opened to the public in Santa Rosa.