When the legendary Daily News sports cartoonist Bill Gallo died last week at age 88, I thought that was an opportunity to show you the drawing he gave me when I visited the paper in the early ’70s. Instead, it’s an opportunity show you that my memory’s not quite what I thought it was.

I didn’t have time to dig out my Bill Gallo drawing and scan it the day he died—it’s been a busy week—and when I pulled out my sports cartoon of Art Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, I noticed that—wait a second! It isn’t signed by Bill Gallo! It’s signed by Gene Ward. So I guess I’d remembered that childhood incident wrong.

But who’s Gene Ward?

I figured he must be a second string cartoonist who lived in Bill Gallo’s shadow at the Daily News, but when I started to do research, everything I could find tells me that Ward was a respected sports writer at the paper who, according to his obituary, covered 29 consecutive Kentucky Derbies. But nothing I could uncover showed that he was an artist as well. And yet … there’s his signature.

Which means … what?

That he was a columnist who drew cartoons for his own column? I find that difficult to believe, since someone somewhere online would have surely mentioned that.

That the piece was done by a staff artist at the Daily News who never got credit for his assignment because the writer hogged it all? I find that hard to believe, too, particularly since I’ve seen other art credited to Gene Ward for sale.

That this is really by Bill Gallo after all, as I first thought? The more I look at it, and compare it to other examples of Gallo’s art, the more I think that can’t be true either.

All I’m sure of is … I was handed this artwork at the Daily News by the artist himself … whoever that was.

So … who actually drew this piece? Who did I actually meet as a kid in the early ’70s? Looks like even though I thought I knew … I don’t.

Any ideas?