Gallo, Bill, 1922-2011

Bill Gallo (1922-2011) was an award-winning American sports cartoonist.

Born December 28, 1922 in New York City and raised in Astoria, Queens, William "Bill" Gallo grew up wanting to work for a newspaper. His father, an immigrant from the Basque region of Spain, worked at the the Spanish-language paper La Prensa . Gallo acquired his art education through Columbia University and what is now the School of Visual Arts through the GI Bill.

In 1941, he joined the staff of the New York Daily News and worked as a reporter, caption writer and staff artist. He left in 1942 to serve with the United States Marine Corps but returned in 1945 after a tour of duty that included Iwo Jima. In 1954 his first cartoon was published in the Daily News and he became the paper's sports cartoonist in 1960, after the death of cartoonist Leo O'Melia. Not only did Gallo depict many figures in the sports world, he has also met and befriended many prominent athletes including Muhammad Ali and baseball's Joe Dimaggio.

Gallo has been an active member of the National Cartoonists Society. He served two terms as NCS president and won many of their awards including best sports cartoonist (1968-1970, 1972-1973, 1983-1985, 1987-1988), the Silver T-Square Award (1978), and the Elzie Segar Award (1976). In 1998 NCS recognized him with the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award. Gallo's work has also won several Page One Awards from the New York Newspaper Guild. Gallo has been a member of the New York Boxing Writers (serving as president), the Baseball Writers Association, Professional Football Writers, Turf Writers and The New York Press Association. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

An estimated 15,000 cartoons by Gallo have appeared in the Daily News and in 2000, Gallo published Drawing a Crowd: Bill Gallo's Greatest Sports Moments . As of 2009, Gallo was still writing a weekly sports column for the Daily News .

Gallo died in May 2011 of complications of pneumonia.