Charles M. Schulz left us Such Memories!!!!
Here are some words in memory of this great Cartoon Sage from press and
some of his Past and Contemporary Peers who learned from his legacy!!

Schulz, 77, died in his sleep after a battle with colon cancer and a series of small strokes that forced him
to announce his retirement in December. His Sunday comic featured Snoopy typing out a farewell message
that became Schulz's epitaph.

For nearly 50 years, Schulz drew and wrote every one of Peanuts' 18,000-plus strips, in later years from
his office at 1 Snoopy Place in Santa Rosa. A mirror of baby-boomer nuance, Peanuts became a part of
American pop culture, starring a gang of imperfect, neurotic and crudely drawn children facing everyday
adversities.

"The hopeful and hapless Charlie Brown, the joyful Snoopy, the soulful Linus, even the 'crabby'
Lucy, give voice, day after day, to what makes us human," President Clinton said in a statement.

Charles Monroe Schulz was born Nov. 26, 1922, in Minneapolis and grew up in St. Paul. He was the
son of a barber. "Sparky" Schulz's only cartooning education was through art correspondence courses.
He was drafted and served in World War II as an Army infantryman.

In 1948 he launched his first feature, Li'l Folks. Renamed Peanuts - a title Schulz said he never liked
- the strip made its debut Oct. 2, 1950, in seven papers. At the end, it appeared in 2,600 in 75 countries
and 21 languages. Peanuts films, books, videos, theme parks, a Broadway musical and countless
merchandise followed.

Schulz drew from his childhood for Peanuts. A red-haired young woman who rejected his marriage
proposal became Charlie Brown's unrequited love, the Little Red-Haired Girl.

"All my fears, my anxieties, my joys and almost even all of my experiences go into that strip," Schulz
said in a recent 60 Minutes interview.

A private family service will be held this week, and a public memorial service is planned later. A tribute
to Peanuts will be printed in newspaper comics pages May 27, when Schulz will posthumously receive
the National Cartoonists Society's Lifetime Achievement Award. Schulz's family requested that in lieu
of flowers, donations be made to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, a campaign Schulz helmed.

A clause in Schulz's contract prevents any other cartoonist from taking over Peanuts. United
Feature is offering old strips to newspapers; about 95% of Peanuts carriers have picked up the reruns.

Another of Schulz's 60 Minutes comments resonates poignantly in the wake of his death: "I lie in bed
some nights and I can't think of anything and I can't go to sleep. And as Charlie Brown says, 'Sometimes
I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Why me?" Then a voice answers, "Nothing personal. Your name just
happened to come up."

Words by Fellow Cartoonists: Source: Various!

"For 50 years, his keen eye, his good and generous heart, and his active brush and pen have given life
to the most memorable cast of characters ever to enliven our daily papers." -- President Clinton

"For 50 years, Peanuts has shown us the way. There is not a cartoonist alive who is not indebted to him,
and all of us will miss his gentle and wholly original talent." -- Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau

"Peanuts has been for most of its existence the best comic strip in history, and nothing's ever approached
it. He's going to be missed and will never be replaced." -- Momma's Mell Lazarus

"In a couple of centuries, when people talk about American artists, he'll be one of the very few remembered.
And when they talk about comic strips, probably his will be the only one ever mentioned."
-- Mad magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones

"He didn't do the traditional solid cartoon, which was kind of slapstick humor. But he brought in pathos,
failure, rejection, all that stuff, and somehow made it funny." -- Beetle Bailey's Mort Walker

"Strips prior to his time reflected the world around us; he opened a door to the world inside us and allowed
us to share feelings that are common to everyone." -- Funky Winkerbean cartoonist Tom Batiuk

"He made it possible for new cartoonists to be inspired and get their start. He was a master of timing in
every way." -- Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham

What does it mean that Charles Schulz died suddenly Saturday night, less than 12 hours before
publication of the final panel of Peanuts, his great comic strip? Should we admire the tidiness of a
life so perfectly synchronized to work, or mourn a life that ended before it could be appreciated
on other terms? When it comes to daily cartoon strips, how metaphysical is too metaphysical?

If ever there were a need for one of Lucy's summary five-cent psychiatric evaluations, it is now.
But of course, she's gone. So is Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, Schroeder, Pig-Pen and Frieda, with the
naturally curly hair. No one remains to tell us how to grieve for a cartoon strip about a boy with a head
like a pie plate, drawn by a guy called "Sparky."

Perhaps you start by decoding the characters that populated Peanuts and made it, even in the banality
of its final years, so appealing. The characters endure because they are us.

Lucy is the brash entrepreneur and bossy-boots. Charlie Brown is the working class, powered by
tenacious hopes and dreams. Snoopy is the undaunted iconoclast; Linus is the insecure wisdom of
democracy. Schroeder, the piano-playing prodigy, manifests the American faith in creativity. Pig-Pen
expresses the dignity of our agrarian roots ("affixed to me (is) the dirt and dust of countless ages");
Frieda is the minor sin of occasional vanity.

It's your call. The beauty of Peanuts was that it gave every reader something individual. Schulz's
deceptively simple artwork hid fresh ways of thinking about the daily cartoon: not as just a series or a joke,
but as a daily fix of human nature - by turns crabby, absurd, empathetic, forlorn, joyful and humdrum.

In that way, you might say Schulz was channeling the human experience. His characters were his familiars,
and ours. When Charlie Brown had an off day, he was as dull and banal as our workaday lives can be.
When a line drive blew his clothes off, you knew how he felt. When the red-haired girl looked right past him,
or the tree ate his kite, or Lucy ate his lunch, you knew how that felt. And when Snoopy took flight, you
knew how that felt, too. Bad news from the front lines of cartoon metaphors: The beagle has landed.

Quotations from 1980 Schulz book!
From Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Me

''Actually, I don't really know if I was aware (as a child) that there were such things as comic strip artists.
I liked the funny papers and I was fascinated by them and read every one, but I suppose I didn't realize
that you could make a living drawing until I was in my early teens.''

On early efforts at professional cartooning: ''I must confess that, at the time, I had only a meager interest
in drawing little kids. I drew them because they were what sold.''

On the name Peanuts, picked when he started at United Feature Syndicate: ''I disliked the name then, as I
do now, but in spite of my objection, they liked it; thus, the strip was named Peanuts. ... Who was I, an
unknown kid from St. Paul, to argue with them? I gave in.''

''I have never regarded children as my main audience. The real fans are adults, from high school age on
up, for they have memories of what it was like to be a child, and can appreciate Peanuts much more
deeply than can the youngsters.''

''You can't create humor out of happiness. 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.'''

''I like to think of Charlie Brown as being a bit of Everyman. ... He tries to assume a perfect social image,
but everything seems to go wrong. There is a lot of myself in his character, too.''

On the inspiration for Snoopy, a childhood pet named Spike: ''He was the smartest and most uncontrollable
dog that I have ever seen. ... One day I counted up and realized that Spike had a vocabulary of at least 50
words. You could say to him, 'Spike, do you want a potato? Why don't you go downstairs and get a potato?'
and he would immediately go down to the basement and stick his head in the potato sack and bring up a potato.''

''Lucy and Linus are the only characters who have tiny half circles around their eyes. Charlie Brown and
Snoopy have them when they are confused or surprised, but Lucy and Linus always look as if their eyes
were slightly out of focus.''

''Of all the things in the strip, I think that I am most proud of Linus' security blanket. I may not have
invented the term, but I like to think that I helped make it a part of our language.''

In summation,
Wonderful Memories hath this great man wrought in his Cartoons, called "Peanuts" by his
publisher company, United Features Syndicate, for 50 years !!!

Congressman Thompson proposed HR3642 on 2-10-00 to award
Charles M. Schulz the Congressional Gold medal!! Result: Passed 410-1

The Senate will next Consider s.2060 for the same Medal Legislation!

Some special links I've found:
Charles Shulz on Cartooning: 1994 Seminar
LA Times article
Cool Bio
Press Demo Memorial
Peanuts Collector Club
Peanuts Master Links
Peanuts FAQ!!!

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