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Drawn Together

Posted on | June 4, 2009 | 4,392 views |

 

The inside scoop on how Jeannie Schulz came to donate $1 million (maybe more) to the OSU Cartoon Library and Museum

by Adam King

Jeannie Schulz always marveled at how Peanuts, the comic strip created by her husband Charles Schulz, could touch people in so many ways.

She first heard the words “Good Grief, Charlie Brown” in college - long before marrying the man behind the pen - when friends would mimic the famous line from the strip whenever they encountered a frustrating moment.

“People grew up with the Peanuts characters and for many people it got them through sad times in their lives,” Schulz said. “The comic gives them hope and connects with people in a human way. Because of that, people will want to continue to touch it in some way. They will want to touch it and be retouched by it.”

Peanuts fans can do that by visiting the iconic strip’s museum in Santa Rosa, Calif.

But Schulz has come to appreciate the cartoon world as a whole and the importance of its preservation, which is one reason why she has donated $1 million toward the renovation of Ohio State’s Cartoon Library and Museum in Sullivant Hall. She is willing to match up to $2.5 million more if OSU can raise a similar amount from other sources.

The donation also is a way for Schulz to honor her and her late husband’s longtime friendship with Cartoon Library and Museum Curator Lucy Shelton Caswell. They initially saw the respect the cartooning community gave Caswell and got to know her well during their trips to the Reubens, cartoonists’ version of television’s Emmy Awards.

The Schulzes asked Caswell to be on the board of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center when the idea to build first began in 1998, and she remains a member today.

“My donation was a tribute to Lucy and a wonderful thing for us because of everything she had done to create a home commensurate with everything she had established at Ohio State,” Schulz said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if when the library reopens it’s not considered the foremost collection in the world. Those superlatives might not mean that much, but it is certainly an archive that any cartoon historian will be able to utilize and mine for treasures.”

The collection’s 400,000 treasures are currently out of space in the 6,800-square-foot library. There is off-site storage and a remote depository, “but the crisis is the space required for original art, which needs to be stored with the security and environmental controls we have here,” Caswell said. “Jean Schulz’s donation is an important step toward realizing a solution for our very grave needs for increased space.”

Once the $20.6 million renovation is complete sometime in 2013, the Cartoon Library and Museum will have three museum-quality galleries among 40,000 square feet of space. The Department of Dance and the Music Dance Library also are contributing to the renovation.

“Right now our gallery is in our reading room, so people can’t see the exhibition if we have a class meeting,” Caswell said. “It’s also disruptive to researchers to have people go around and look at exhibits. Visitors often laugh at what’s on the walls, which is what they’re supposed to do, so we’re in desperate need of real galleries.”

Schulz, who grew up reading Katzenjammer Kids, Bringing Up Father and Dick Tracy, got her first look at the university’s cartoon archives during the 2001 OSU Festival of Cartoon Art, shortly after Charles passed away.

She was impressed by the archives’ breadth and how much insight the festival speakers revealed about what goes into cartooning.

“The festival was marvelously informative and inspiring in terms of listening to, if you will, the intellectual and university-worthy part of cartooning,” Schulz said. “Unless you went to a lecture series, you wouldn’t hear those people and they wouldn’t be speaking to cartoonists. The former cartoon editor of The New Yorker might talk about his career and have anecdotes to share, but to this audience he spoke to a little more depth.”

The Cartoon Library and Museum houses only eight pieces of Charles Schulz’s work. So the broader goal of supporting a genre is what motivated Jeannie Schulz’s donation and fundraising challenge.

“Jean Schulz wants to see cartoon art promoted and respected in important ways, and I believe a major academic institution is in her view an appropriate place for that to occur,” Caswell said. “It’s very moving that she has committed these kinds of resources.”

 

Schulz gained fondness for comics through her husband’s passion

Charles Schulz was the master of his Peanuts world, and that helped the comic strip become the success it is because he “owned” every aspect of it.

But he often opened up that world to those close to him before it made the papers, and it gave his wife Jeannie a true appreciation for his work.

“Because cartoonists’ work is a solitary affair, when I came into the studio and commented on the finished strips and said I thought they were funny, his reaction was great pleasure because as he said, he really didn’t know if people would think they were funny or not,” Jeannie said.

Jeannie was exposed to the greater cartoon world in other ways. Often the Schulzes would have dinner with fellow cartoonists, and Jeannie continued to do so after Charles died in 2000. It was during those conversations that she learned the subtleties of cartooning.

It was like finding out something new about an old friend, and her appreciation for cartooning has only grown since. Still, her affinity for Charles, who nearly everyone called Sparky, is clear.

He knew he wanted to be a cartoonist by age 6 in 1928, and his parents allowed him to grow in his drawing, even though they didn’t think it would amount to much, Schulz said.

“Obviously there have been wonderful cartoonists, but his 50-year career is part of what sets him apart,” Schulz said. “I think there are other careers that are 50 years, but not done by one man and not the mind of one man.

“He always knew what he was doing. Somebody said to me he knew what his brand was before he drew it. I’m gradually understanding what that means. He wanted to control it because he knew it was his. It’s odd because he was a success. But if he wasn’t a success, he wouldn’t have cared.”

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