What a sad coincidence — the very same day I learn that the Muppets are going to be honored with a set of official U.S. postage stamps, I also learn that Jerry Juhl, one of the men who made the Muppets into the icons we all know and love, has died.

If you’ve never heard of Juhl, don’t feel bad. His name was never as well-known as those of Jim Henson or Frank Oz. Nevertheless, Juhl was instrumental in bringing the foam critters with the wry, gentle senses of humor to life. He was with Jim in the very beginning, before Sesame Street or The Muppet Show, back when the Muppets were strange little creatures appearing in advertisements and space-filler segments on a local TV channel in Washington, D.C. Juhl started as a performer for Jim, but eventually evolved into a writer, and it was in this role that he had the most influence over what the Muppets ultimately became. Through his scripts for the aforementioned TV shows and later the first four feature films that starred the Muppets, he helped to create or develop most of the major characters that populate the Henson empire, notably Fozzie Bear and The Great Gonzo.

Curiously, I haven’t found any mention of Jerry Juhl’s passing in the mainstream press, even though he apparently died on Monday following a short battle with cancer. I heard about it, not surprisingly, from Evanier, who directed me to a very nice tribute written by Ken Plume of the FilmForce Web site. As Ken so nicely puts it:

…much of what we know and identify as being indelibly “Muppety” is due to the wit and wonder of Juhl’s writing.

I thrived on that wit and wonder in my younger days. Like everybody else who grew up in the ’70s, I acquired a lot of my early education from Sesame Street, a show I continued watching for years after I was too old for it, just because I loved the Muppet segments. I used to watch The Muppet Show, too, every Sunday afternoon at my grandmother’s house, sprawled on my belly in front of her old ’60s-vintage console television with the oddly rounded screen, my cousins Stacey and Kori at my side. Grandma always fretted that it wasn’t natural for kids to be watching TV on such beautiful afternoons, that we ought to be outside playing and that we were somehow being harmed by the silliness on the tube, but if she knew about the warm glow I still get when thinking of those days, I think she’d understand that everything turned out alright.

Grandma always dismissed the Muppets as stupid kid-stuff. She never understood that, while they were child-friendly and simple in execution, they were definitely not stupid. Like the Looney Tune cartoons before them, the various Muppet projects worked on two layers of humor: the silly sight-gags and slapstick that even very young kids can get, and a more sophisticated form largely based on character. Many of the truly atrocious puns heard on TMS were based on literary or cultural references, and you had to be pretty quick to get all of them. The Muppets never talked down to kids, as so many characters on children’s shows seem to do these days. They were like the rare adult who genuinely likes and understands kids, and they were genuinely funny, too. And they were sweet characters, as well; there was real pathos in many of the Muppets’ adventures, and in the insecurities displayed by all the major characters from time to time. The fact that they were all animals made out of foam and fur and feathers did not affect their humanity in the least. Kermit the Frog, in particular, is simply one of the most decent characters ever created.

Yes, I loved the Muppets. I had a Muppet poster on my bedroom wall, just opposite from one of C-3PO and R2-D2, and somewhere down in the Bennion Archives, I’ve still got a well-worn LP record of The Muppet Movie soundtrack. If you got me liquoured up enough, I’d probably even sing “The Rainbow Connection” for you — I still remember the lyrics. But as with so many other things I loved as a child, something went wrong with the Muppets in the ’90s. Growing up obviously changed my perspective on them, but there were other factors, too. Things changed after Jim Henson died. The Muppets went on in his absence, but they started to seem less like living, breathing people and more like products to be packaged and sold. The ruthless and unending merchandising of Elmo, and the way that furry little bastard has shouldered aside ever other character on Sesame is a perfect example. At some point in the mid-90s, without its founder to guide it, the Henson Company lost its soul. Not surprisingly, this is also about the time that Jerry Juhl left the organization. If Jim was the soul of the Muppets, Jerry was the wit, and there’s been precious little of either in recent Muppet offerings. And that, I suppose, is all the tribute Jerry Juhl requires. He and Jim and Frank Oz were the true Rainbow Connection, and now Frank is all that remains and their creations are little more than shambling revenants as far as I’m concerned. But that’s the way it goes, I guess. A lot of things that I loved in my youth, that I always thought would be eternal, have turned out to be unexpectedly fragile. They weren’t meant to last after all.

Kermit would’ve understood that sentiment, I think, and Juhl’s favorite, the terminally weird and always a little-bit-sad Gonzo, definitely would have.