My parents were avid readers, when I was a kid growing up in New York; we got the New York Daily News, sometimes the New York Times and after the 1963 newspaper strike, the Herald-Tribune before that paper ceased publication in 1966. Both my parents were proud Irish Americans who believed anything was possible in America.
That’s why Mom would read to us and encourage us to read, read as much as possible, and absorb all the world’s knowledge.
I liked the New York Daily News, still do in fact. The best sports section in New York. One of the reasons was Bill Gallo.
His artwork, can they be just called cartoons, if it seems like art? Anyway, it was his artwork that drew me to the sports section first when I was young.
With his art and the words, he gave me a great gift. Bill Gallo taught me how to read. Also, Bill Gallo used his own gift to give me an understanding to the sports world around me.
Of all his creations, I always had a fondness for Basement Bertha. She seems to have loved the Mets and baseball as much as I did. Bill Gallo taught me about boxing and horse racing as well as baseball.
Bill Gallo along with Pete Hamill, Kay Gardella, Jimmy Berslin, and Dick Young opened my eyes to the world around me and will never be able to thank them enough for exposing me to the value of the written word.
Like my father, Bill Gallo was a veteran of WWII. Bill Gallo served as a Marine, and he was at Iwo Jima when the US over took it.
His columns about his experiences in battle during WWII gave me an even deeper appreciation for our armed forces, an appreciation that will never falter.
Bill Gallo was the last of a dying breed, a sport cartoonist. The Sunday edition of the New York Daily News will seem a little emptier now without his wit and wisdom and humor. For that, we all are that much poorer.
In the last 15-20 years, when a major sports figure would pass on, he was draw them in what he called “The Balcony”, a kind of sports Heaven if you may, He’s there now with his parents, loved ones and his friends that have been waiting for him.
May Bill Gallo rest peacefully in Gods loving embrace.
Now all you fathers go play catch with you kids.
Two last words for the fallen WWII Marine: Semper Fi.
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