The ex-flame who inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl in ‘Peanuts’ dies

Last summer, day after day, I called the Little Red-Haired Girl. And night after night, I wondered whether I would ever actually get to talk with her.

The Little Red-Haired Girl — actually, the real woman who inspired the iconic “Peanuts” character — was Donna Johnson Wold. And she proved as elusive as Charlie Brown’s dream crush.

Then, last July, I finally spoke with Wold, who was warm and humble and utterly endearing.

More than six decades ago, she had chosen her longtime firefighter husband over Charles M. Schulz.

Schulz, the world-famous “Peanuts” creator, turned that heartache into art with the scarlet-haired character, who was featured anew in last November’s “The Peanuts Movie.”

“Oh, we dated for about two years,” Wold told me of her relationship with “Sparky” Schulz; both he and Allan Wold proposed marriage. “I loved him. I guess I chose Al because I knew all Al’s friends, who became my friends. I didn’t really know Sparky’s friends.”

“But it was a long time ago,” added Wold, speaking by phone from the Minneapolis area, where she had lived her full life, traveling and camping and adventuring (she loved the Grand Tetons) and becoming a mother to four and a foster mother to scores more.

Allan and Donna Wold married in 1950, the same year that “Peanuts” debuted.

Schulz would introduce his mysterious, Donna-inspired character to “Peanuts” readers on Nov. 12, 1963, as Charlie Brown said dreamily: “I’d sure like to eat lunch with that little red-haired girl.”

Donna Mae Johnson Wold died Aug. 9 of heart failure and complications from diabetes, the Star Tribune reported over the weekend. She was 87.