Charles M. Schulz

He relocated to Colorado Spring, Colorado in 1951. The wedding bells for him rang the same year as he married Joyce Halverson. The couple was blessed with four children. They adopted a daughter Meredith Hodges.

The family shifted to Minneapolis in 1958 and later to Sebastopol, California. However, his stay in Sebastopol was short lived as he further relocated to Santa Rose, California, in 1969 where he spent the rest of his life.

He divorced Halverson in 1972 and married Jean Forsyth Clyde in 1973. The two remained married until his death.

Charles Monroe Schulz was born to Carl Schulz and Dena Halverson in Minnesota, Minneapolis. He was the only child of the couple and spent his growing up years in Saint Paul. His father was a barber and his mother a housewife.

Nicknamed Sparky after a horse in a comic strip by his uncle, young Schulz loved to draw. His drawing of his pet dog Spike even appeared in the Robert Ripley's syndicated panel of ‘Ripley's Believe It or Not!’

He completed his preliminary education from Richards Gordon Elementary School after which he enrolled at the Central High School. At high school, he tended to be a shy and reserved teenager. He later took a correspondence course from Art Instruction, Inc.

In 1943, he was conscripted into the United States Army as a staff sergeant. He served as a squad leader on a .50 calibre machine gun team in the 20th Armored Division in Europe.

Two years later, he was relieved from his military duties. Retuning to Minneapolis, he took up the work of lettering for a Roman Catholic magazine, Timeless Topix. He continued in the profile for a year before taking up the job of reviewing and grading lessons submitted by students at his alma mater - Art Instruction, Inc.

While continuing as a reviewer and grader, he did not give up on his passion for drawing and instead worked on it to develop his career as a comic creator.

His first ever published regular cartoon weekly series of one-panel jokes was published as Li’l Folks by the St Paul Pioneer Press from 1947 to 1950. He named the titular character as Charlie Brown, a name which he fervently used in his other comic strips/series as well.

In 1948, he sold a one-panel cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post, which became the first of the seventeen future panels that would be published in the newspaper in the following years.

In his lifetime, he was the proud recipient of numerous awards including the National Cartoonists Society's Humor Comic Strip Award, Society's Elzie Segar Award, Reuben Award which he won twice, Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award and Silver Buffalo Award.

In 1969, he was honoured with the naming of the Apollo 10 command module Charlie Brown, and lunar module Snoopy, after his Peanut characters.

In 1974, he served as the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.

In 1978, he was named International Cartoonist of the Year.

In 1990, he was named France's Commander of Arts and Letters, one of the country's highest awards for excellence in the arts.