Bill Gallo, best known as a columnist and sports cartoonist for the New York Daily News, has been honored with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor given by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations. The award “pays homage to the immigrant experience, as well as for individual achievement, medals are awarded to U.S. citizens from various ethnic backgrounds.” Bill’s heritage comes from Spain.
The New York Daily News story recounts Bill’s career with the paper.
Gallo got on the subway, “the good ol subway,” he called it, and headed home to Astoria, where he’d grown up with a love for sports he had inherited from his father, a newspaperman who immigrated to New York from Spain. (Gallo’s mother was an aspiring concert pianist who came to New York from Argentina on vacation and met Gallo’s father in an English language class.)
Within a week of his return, a 24-year-old Gallo was back at The News. He gravitated to the sports desk – “I did everything except sweep the floor, and I did that too,” he says – at a time when the big three sports were baseball, boxing and horse racing.
Back then, Gallo says, every reporter had a bottle in his desk – and good thing too; one day, one of the News’ boxing writers got too drunk to cover an Ernie Durando fight, and the sports editor, knowing that Gallo was at the match, gave him the assignment. Suddenly, he had orders again.
I thought this was pretty cool – it’s amazing that Gallo is still going strong.
Bill Gallo is like a force of nature. He deserves every honor he receives, and more!