{"id":2830,"date":"2011-05-14T22:59:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T02:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=2830"},"modified":"2011-05-14T22:59:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T02:59:21","slug":"the-day-i-thought-i-met-bill-gallo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/14\/the-day-i-thought-i-met-bill-gallo\/","title":{"rendered":"The day I thought I met Bill Gallo"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the legendary Daily News<\/em> sports cartoonist Bill Gallo<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But who’s Gene Ward?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Which means … what? <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That the piece was done by a staff artist at the Daily News<\/em> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, the more I think that can’t be true either.<\/p>\n

All I’m sure of is … I was handed this artwork at the Daily News<\/em> by the artist himself … whoever that was.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Any ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-2830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-old-newspapers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}