While some might try to completely erase the painful memories of unrequited love, others, like Peanuts cartoonist, Charles Schulz, hold on to that bittersweet feeling for the rest of their lives. In fact, over decades, Schulz shared messages via his very public comic strip to the one who got away: The Little Red-Haired Girl.
A recent Vanity Fair piece by Darryn King explores the this releationship in depth. It all began when Charles Schulz, whose friends knew him as “Sparky,” met Donna Mae Johnson while working as an instructor at a Minnesota art school. He was 27 at the time, and his career as a cartoonist was picking up. Donna, at 21, had flaming red hair and worked in the accounting office. Sometimes he’d sneak up and sketch a cartoon or “hello” on her desk. She joined the school’s softball team so she could be around him more; after practices, whenever he’d drop the girls off at their homes one-by-one, he’d wait to bring Donna home last. Soon she became his best friend.
Finally, Sparky, notoriously shy around girls, got up the nerve and asked her out on a date. They went to an ice skating show, and he gave her a music box. And soon, every Monday they were going on a date and sometimes even “necking” at the movies. They took a road trip from their homes in Minneapolis to swim in the St. Croix River and made pancakes over a campfire. Schulz would often tell Donna he wished he had a “diamond ring in my pocket to give to you now,” and she’d reply she wasn’t ready to get married.
In June 1950, Schulz went on a trip to New York, four months after the two started dating, to meet with United Feature Syndicate in hopes of getting a cartoon deal. He returned with a five-year contract to bring Charlie Brown to newspapers across the country and went directly to Donna’s house and proposed. Instead of requiring an answer, he gave her a ceramic white cat and said that when she had finally made her decision to marry him, to place it on his desk when he wasn’t around.
Schulz wasn’t the only person courting Donna, though. For several years, she had been on again, off again with a firefighter named Al Wolz. It was only when Sparky started pursuing Donna that Wolz realized his true feelings for Donna. Just a few weeks after Sparky proposed to Donna, so did Al. After taking some time to deliberate, she chose Al. And, just 19 days after Schulz’s cartoons began running in daily papers, Donna and Al married in October of 1950.
Yet, Sparky, who spent a lifetime battling depression, never forgot about Donna. Sparky first included mentions of the Little Red-Haired Girl in his cartoons in 1961 and would include inside jokes and small references of events between him and Donna in the strips. Donna read the cartoons from the very beginning and knew immediately who the Little Red-Haired Girl was when she popped up in Peanuts. “It was just like reading an old love letter…It was so very nice to be remembered,” Donna once said.
Though the Little Red-Haired Girl can be seen in the 1970s and 80s Charlie Brown movies, Schulz never actually drew her in the comic strips. In reality, he called the red-headed girl the animators created in the movies a “sell out” and swore that she would never be revealed in the comic since some things should stay in a person’s daydreams. The closest one ever comes to seeing her is her silhouette dancing with Snoopy, when Charlie Brown realizes he missed out again on talking to the Little Red-Haired Girl.
Sparky never got over Donna. Though he married twice and had children of his own, he kept Donna in his life as much as he could. Though it never interfered with Donna’s marriage to Al, the two phoned each other over the years, wrote letters and their families even met up for vacation. While Schulz went on to make millions upon millions, Donna and Al settled down to a quiet life in Minneapolis where they had three children of their own, adopted one child and fostered 40 after her own children grew up. But Donna’s kept memories of her relationship with Sparky alive. She still has the music box, the white cat and clippings of Peanuts comic strips that include references to either the Little Red-Haired Girl or some of their own inside jokes.
Schulz died in 2000 after battling cancer, but he was able to talk to Donna a few days before he passed. Donna, now 86-years-old, lives in Minneapolis at a nursing home, where Al comes to visit her every day.
While we’ll never know if Schultz will appreciate the Little Red-Haired Girl in The Peanuts Movie, Donna hopes Charlies Brown gets the courage to talk to her so the Little Red-Haired girl can finally tell him she loves him.
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