ALPINE -- Most devoted fans of Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown and Snoopy cartoon characters had no idea why the cartoonist tucked the words "Happy Birthday Amy" unobtrusively inside one of the comic strip panels each August.Amy Johnson of Alpine snuggles with twin Snoopy dolls based on comic strip drawn by her father, Charles Schulz.
Stuart Johnson, Deseret NewsEven his syndicate editors didn't know the message was meant for his daughter, Amy Johnson, who now lives in Alpine with her husband, John, rearing her family of nine children, riding horses and running an LDS bookstore.
But the year they cut out the message, they discovered that the enigmatic, reclusive artist of the popular strip does nothing without good reason.
He deliberately penned in the note to his daughter six weeks ahead of time so it would come out in print on her Aug. 5 birthday. He didn't like it when the editors erased it; they never interfered again.
"He's an original. He's obsessed with the comic strip, but he likes it," Johnson said. "That's why he would never let anyone else draw for him or use their ideas. It's what makes him so unique and what makes the comic strip work. He took it all very seriously."
As a result, Schulz's seriousness has entertained and amused and enlightened a generation of readers as the Peanuts characters appeared in daily and Sunday newspapers for 50 years as well as on television, in videos and in a variety of venues and products.
Charlie Brown has yet to receive a Valentine. Lucy is constantly crabby. Snoopy is still flying the German skies of World War I while Pigpen has yet to come clean.
And Linus is still holding fast to his beloved blanket.
Despite all of the unresolved story lines, the 77-year-old Schulz will stop creating his comic strip Jan. 3. He was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer in November.
Schulz still has ideas for half-hour specials and wants to keep creating as much as he can, his daughter said.
But it's a stressful life for a cartoonist, particularly one who has outlived most of his friends and colleagues, and her dad, she said, has put in his time.
"I'm not sure what he'll do with himself once he quits doing the comic strip," Johnson said.
"Every day for as long as I can remember, he's always had to be home by noon so he can work. He's used the same pen and the same desk for 50 years, threatening not to quit until he'd worn a hole through the wood. He's almost done that."
Johnson and her siblings grew up in the small town of Sebastopol in northern California, living a "very, very normal" life shared with the Peanuts gang.
"I liked Snoopy the best because of the funny ways Dad could draw him. They (the characters) all almost did seem like brothers and sisters to us. They were around all of the time," she said.
Her dad wasn't, however. He was consistently holed up at his desk. Even today, he seldom leaves the house and rarely makes the trip to Utah to see his grandchildren, ranging in age from 1 to 16 years old.
He came to visit for two hours a few years ago and to tour the Mt. Timpanogos LDS Temple.
Johnson is a returned LDS missionary. She is the only convert to the church in her family and met her husband on her mission to England.
Her father is "very, very supportive" of her decision to join the LDS Church but not inclined to investigate, she said.
When he visits it's a grand occasion, Johnson said. Her father has promised to come back and restore some of his drawings on a bedroom wall that were inadvertently ruined during a remodeling project.
"My dad doesn't like to travel. He just doesn't leave the house. He always sits in a room all alone and draws. That's what he does."
None of Schulz's children are artists, perhaps because their father's drawing was such a constant. "All five of us can't draw at all," Johnson said.
"My son does. It must've skipped a generation because my son Brian was drawing Snoopy at age 7 and I thought he was tracing them, they were so good. Then I realized he didn't even know what tracing meant."
The Schulz kids are starting to realize they've grown up with a legendary, creative and insightful man who met a strict self-imposed deadline every day for 50 years and who will live on long after his time.
"Most people aren't famous until after they die. My dad is going to have the unique opportunity to see how much he's loved while he's still around. He can be happy and watch the world love him."
Johnson is starting to buy more Snoopy and Lucy and Linus toys and books and dolls even though she has always had a lot of samples around her from licensees who "borrowed" the simple but multi-faceted and expressive characters.
"I used to not buy stuff because I felt stupid, but I just bought a pair of Snoopy hugging dolls and I bought out about 20 old Snoopy books that I found because they're the ones I used to read. I realized I might want to have these."
In the meantime, Johnson has the original comic strip drawn on the day each of her children were born. She has a priceless photograph of her father reading "Peanuts" to her.
She keeps several Sunday panels, including the ones with "Happy Birthday Amy," in a vault.
She and her brothers and sisters are making a trip to California this holiday to spend it with Schulz and his wife, Jeannie.
"We decided we better be together for Christmas this year," she said.
And she's looking at everything she has from her dad a little more closely, with more of an eye for what she will always have of him.
"We always said when he died we absolutely would not let another artist draw the comic strip. That's never been done before. A comic strip is usually picked up and continued. With us, there's no question," she said.
"My dad is Charlie Brown, inside and out. Nobody else can be that."