“Dear Friends,
I have been fortunate to draw Charlie Brown and his friends for almost 50 years. It has been the fulfillment of my childhood ambition.
Unfortunately, I am no longer able to maintain the schedule demanded by a daily comic strip, therefore I am announcing my retirement.
I have been grateful over the years for the loyalty of our editors and the wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip.
Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy… how can I ever forget them…”
I get a little choked up at the way that last line trails off.
We noted earlier that Frisbee inventor Fred Morrison didn’t like the name Wham-O gave to his flying disc. Charles Schulz also didn’t like the new name United Feature Syndicate gave to his strip, which he had been calling Li’l Folks. “I was very upset with the title,” Schulz once said about Peanuts, “and still am.”
Things seemed to work out for them both. 200 million Frisbees have been sold, and Schulz’s strip is still in reruns in 2500+ newspapers, 60 years after he started the strip.
More: See our review of the 2007 biography Schulz and Peanuts.