Schulz at the Rink

Every Tuesday night for decades, Charles Schulz laced up his skates at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena and played pickup hockey. He was not famous for hockey. He was famous for a dog who imagined himself as a World War One flying ace, a boy who could never kick a football, and a blanket that served as armor against the world. But in Santa Rosa, at his rink, on Tuesday nights, he was just a man on the ice.

Schulz built the arena in nineteen sixty-nine with his first wife Joyce designing it in a Swiss Alps village style, with peaked rooflines and warm interior light, to be, in his words, one of the prettiest ice rinks in the world. He was not exaggerating wildly. The Redwood Empire Ice Arena became a regional institution for youth hockey and figure skating, two sports that had almost no infrastructure in Sonoma County before he built it.

He served as a referee. He hosted youth clinics. He established Snoopy's Senior World Hockey Tournament in nineteen seventy-five, which drew teams from across the country. In nineteen eighty-one, he received the Lester Patrick Trophy, given annually for outstanding service to ice hockey in the United States. Previous recipients included figures from within the sport. Schulz was a cartoonist.

He appeared on ice at the arena until very close to the end of his life. When he was diagnosed with colon cancer in November of nineteen ninety-nine, he announced his retirement from the strip at the same time. He died three months later.

A café at the arena is called the Warm Puppy. The museum just down the street, which opened in two thousand two, preserves his original studio, reconstructed inside the building. Tuesday nights at the rink still happen.