Arnold Lee Shapiro 

(Kansas City, MO 18 April 1934 - Long Beach, CA 19 March 2022)

Arnold passed away a month shy of his 88th birthday, surrounded by loved ones. The second child of David and Elizabeth (née Mazie) Shapiro, he spent his career bringing joy to others, first as a producer of greeting cards, then as a publisher of pop-up books.

Arnold left his native Kansas City to study journalism at Northwestern University (BA 1956; MSJ 1957), where he met his future ex-wife Miriam (“Mickie”, daughter of Morris and Gertrude Fink of Wilmette, IL). They married in 1958. After briefly working as a writer for CBS News in Chicago, Arnold was hired by Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, where he eventually rose to the position of Creative Director. 

In 1960, he had the idea to bring the beloved characters of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip into the Hallmark brand. He felt that its “human nature and good philosophy” would resonate with people seeking to connect with friends and loved ones. His inspired concept initially met resistance from Hallmark’s CEO who was reluctant to pay royalties to a third party when Hallmark already had a large staff of writers and illustrators. But Arnold, characteristically secure in his convictions, approached Charles Schulz with the concept and convinced Hallmark to agree to a trial run of four Peanuts cards to be test-marketed in two locations—the company’s flagship store and another in a suburban neighborhood. While certain that his idea had merit, Arnold did not leave the venture to chance. He and his wife visited the downtown Kansas City store near his office regularly, surreptitiously purchasing multiple copies of the Peanuts cards. At the end of the test period, Hallmark’s marketing department attributed the more positive sales of the cards downtown to the greater sophistication of the urban market, much to Arnold’s amusement, and a long-standing partnership with Schulz was formed. In 1968 Arnold co-wrote the lyrics to the Royal Guardsmen’s hit song “Snoopy for President.”

Arnold left Hallmark for California in 1972, to work for Buzza-Cardozo Greeting Cards in Anaheim before joining Intervisual Communications, Inc., an international producer of pop-up and novelty books. As a partner, Arnold wrote and produced hundreds of titles and sold to publishers worldwide, several with such celebrated authors and illustrators as Maurice Sendak, Tomie DePaola, Jonathan Miller, and Jan Pienkowski. After Intervisual, Arnold went on to create Compass Productions, another company specializing in novelty books, predominantly for children, and served as its president until his retirement.

In 2005, Arnold appeared on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow with a cache of rare original Peanuts artwork given to him by Charles Schulz, or “Sparky” as he was known to friends, which in 2020 he donated to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA. He was subsequently honored in a ceremony coinciding with the opening of the exhibition “Greetings Charlie Brown: The Peanuts-Hallmark Connection.”

Arnold’s family and friends will fondly remember his warmth, humor, and creativity (he happily fashioned sculptures from old tennis shoes and other found objects); his love of the theater, travel, and fine dining; and his strongly-held opinions about politics, education, and sushi. Arnold loved to celebrate. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Holidays. It usually involved a feast. Skipping dessert was not an option. 

Arnold was generous and grateful; loyal and supportive, spirited and engaged. 

And he loved to tell stories. Lots of stories. He might say, “I probably told you this already. . . “ and the response was often, “Tell me again. . . “  So he would tell you about his time in the army reserves with the communications division where they “fought with words not bullets”; or the time Dame Edna brought him onstage; or the time Eartha Kitt sang directly to him at the Hotel Carlyle; or the time he had dinner with Gloria Swanson; or the time he was at Northwestern and a husky-voiced lady picked him up in a ’64 Mustang convertible while he was hitchhiking from south campus to north, and she told him about her daughter who would soon be transferring there and then Arnie met the daughter and married her and they had four children. But mostly he would tell you about those kids and how proud he was of them. 

Arnold is survived by his sister Estelle Fabes; his children, Michael Almereyda, Kenneth Lapatin, Daniel Shapiro, and Spencer Kayden, all from his marriage with Mickie (1958 - 1980); his childrens’ spouses and partners; three grandchildren, nephews, niece, cousins, and many, many dear friends. He loathed the mortuary industry, explicitly instructed that no funeral services be held, and asked that his ashes be scattered into the Pacific Ocean. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that donations in his memory be made to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).