SPARK OF HUMOR

is lifelong nickname aptly came from a comic strip: Charles M. Schulz, creator of the beloved strip, was known. The shy child became a melancholy adult and, in 1943, was drafted into the U.S. Army. Shortly before shipping out, he returned home to say farewell to his dying mother. “Goodbye, Sparky. We’ll probably never see each other again,” she told him. “I’ll never get over that scene as long as I live,” he said later. His unit, the 20th Armored Division’s 8th Armored Infantry Battalion, reached the front in Germany shortly before the war’s end. A staff sergeant leading a .50-caliber machine gun squad, he saw little action and recalled that the one time he wanted to fire the gun, he discovered it wasn’t loaded. Schulz was discharged in January 1946; appeared just over four years later and ran nonstop for nearly 50 years. “Happiness does not create humor,” he once said. “There’s nothing funny about being happy. Sadness creates humor.”