Jim Doe, longtime manager at Santa Rosa’s Redwood Ice Arena, dies at 78

Jim Doe would be hiking, or eating in a restaurant, or walking down a street and it ? would happen.

Someone would step up, perhaps offer Doe a handshake or hug and tell of having worked for him at Santa Rosa’s Redwood Empire Ice Arena 20 or 30 or close to 40 years ago.

Doe would respond, in deadpan, “Did I ever fire you?”

Sometimes he had. Quite likely, the ex-employee and Doe, a Marine Corps veteran with a gruff exterior and a cream center, would at once be laughing over old stories from “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz’s skate and hockey rink.

Doe, who labored his way up from a meager childhood in Santa Rosa and enjoyed mentoring young people while taking on greater management roles at the Schulz family’s arena-cafe-?gift shop complex, died Jan. 19 at a Santa Rosa hospital at the age of 78. He had struggled privately with a progressive lung disease.

Doe studied at Santa Rosa High School, served his country, operated several neighborhood diners with his late wife, Sharon, and cooked at a Denny’s restaurant before he was hired in 1970 at the Warm Puppy Cafe inside the ice arena that Schulz and his first wife, Joyce, had opened the previous year.

Doe would say long afterward had no idea at first who Charles M. Schulz was. He imagined he would work for a while in the cafe where the globally renowned creator of Snoopy and Charlie Brown dined daily, then move on.

Instead, Doe became indispensable to Schulz and his family and stayed on at the arena, also known as Snoopy’s Home Ice, for 37 years. He retired in 2007 as a vice president in charge of all operations at the celebrity-tread campus on West Steele Lane.

Throughout his long, behind-the-scenes tenure, Doe was deeply involved in the day-to-day running of the business and also its many special events: the former holiday ice show, the now 44-year-old Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament, concerts, tennis tournaments on the Schulzes’ nearby courts and all manner of other competitions and performances.

From 1970 until Charles Schulz died in 2000, the two men were seldom out of earshot.

“There was a level in which they were like brothers, teasing and taunting each other at the same time that they held each other in the highest regard,” said the cartoonist’s widow, Jeannie Schulz, who remains busy in the family businesses and in local philanthropy.

Her stepson and business partner, Craig Schulz, recalled one particular morning that Doe was at the Warm Puppy Cafe. “My dad walks in and says, ‘Jim, what are you going to do today?’”

Doe had begun to enumerate the tasks that lay ahead when Charles Schulz asked him, “You want to go to the World Series?”

Doe was saying that he had work to do when Schulz interjected, “I’m the boss. You want to go or not?” The two went to the game.

When Doe worked at the arena alongside Schulz and famous athletes, entertainers and visitors the likes of astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, skateboarder Tony Hawk, tennis star Billie Jean King, singer Helen Reddy and skaters Kristi Yamaguchi, Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, Scott Hamilton and Robin Cousins, he’d moved into a world far different from the one he was born into.

As a member of the large family of Victoria and Edgar Doe in Santa Rosa’s South Park neighborhood, young Jim Doe lived leanly. His dad died when he was young, and life at the Doe house grew even tougher.

Jim Doe credited his mother with teaching her kids to be proud and self-reliant. He recalled being about 5 and noticing one day in South Park that government surplus cheese was being given away from a truck. He accepted some.

When he showed it to Victoria Doe, she instructed him, “We don’t take things for free. Take it back.”

At age 9 or 10, Doe befriended and began to work alongside South Park neighbor Ben Barnes, who ran a janitorial service and was married to local Halloween celebrity Gladys “Mother Witch” Barnes. Doe would say he learned much from Ben Barnes about how to work.

An industrious boy, Doe counted among his friends Sharon Ann Harding, whose childhood also was no walk in the park. Later the two of them built a marriage that produced two children, Rebecca and Jim Jr. Sharon Doe died of cancer in 2003.

Jim Doe was nearly 19 when he joined the U.S. Marines. He worked security at weapons depots and other installations throughout California.

He served four years, then returned to Santa Rosa. He and Sharon married in 1967, then worked together at a succession of Doe’s Cafes.

Jim Doe would recall that in 1970, when he was approaching age 30, he applied to work in food service at two young Sonoma County institutions: Sonoma State College and the Redwood Ice Arena.

Both offered him a job. Doe accepted the offer of Joyce Schulz at the new ice rink. He wasn’t at the Warm Puppy Cafe long when the Schulzes promoted him to its manager, then to manager of the gift shop.

The Marine veteran loved to joke and have a good time and play gags, and he taught his employees they could, too - but first and foremost they had to do the work.

“He was a great boss,” said Judy Schulz, who wasn’t yet Craig Schulz’s wife when she joined the cafe staff in 1974. “He kept us on our toes, but made it fun.”

“He fired a lot of people,” recalled Dave Medin, who worked for Doe for nearly a decade before becoming a Sonoma County deputy sheriff.

Medin said Doe ate and played games with his employees, and he was loyal to them as long as they did their jobs. “He was great to work for - as long as you didn’t piss him off,” Medin said.

Helen Sharrocks, who went to work in the Warm Puppy Cafe in 1973 and became Doe’s assistant in 1980 said, “Working with Jim Doe taught me so many life lessons.

“His integrity and honesty made everyone around him rise up and try harder.”

Following the death of Charles Schulz in 2000 there was a reorganization at the Redwood Ice Arena and Doe was promoted to vice president in charge of all aspects of the business. “He was a natural choice to come in and run the entire operation,” Jeannie Schulz said.

He served in that role until 2007, retiring at age 67.

In recent years, Doe spent a great deal of time traveling and hiking. On a trip to Japan, where “Peanuts” is hugely popular, he was treated as near royalty and he met the first lady.

Right up until his death from pulmonary fibrosis, he was active on the committee that’s planning this year’s 50th anniversary at the ice arena. Friend and former employee Medin said it’s sad that he didn’t live to attend that celebration.

“That’s really a bummer for me. I know he was looking forward to seeing everybody.”

Doe is survived by his daughter, Rebecca Duvall of Vacaville; son, Jim Doe Jr. of Cotati; and three grandchildren.

A celebration of his life is at 2 p.m. on Feb. 8 at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. His family recommends dressing warmly.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are welcomed to the American Lung Association, www.lung.org or 55 W. Wacker Drive, Suite 1150, Chicago, IL 60601.