Charles Schulz on the rumors of his death being greatly exaggerated

CHARLES SCHULZ: Last month, [my wife] Jeannie and I took a trip, and I played in the Dinah Shore golf tournament, and about the second or third evening they had a buffet dinner. We brought our food into a room and sat down at a round table and we introduced ourselves around... At one point, an elderly woman sitting on my left said, “Charles Schulz -ー that's kind of a nice name, isn't it?” And I said, “I never really thought about it.” And she said, "Isn't that the name of the fellow who's the cartoonist?” Then she said, “He's dead, isn't he?"

To compound the problem, three nights ago, some of the people from United Media dropped by Santa Rosa, and we all went out to dinner. Afterwards, we were passing out through the entrance, and the man at the counter stopped me and said, “There's something I want to tell you -ー there were two or three ladies in there the other night who got into a big argument. One of them said you were dead, the other said, 'No, he's not!'”... Well, even though I've been drawing for almost 45 years, I'm still here!