That seemed entirely fitting because Bill Gallo never stopped.
He started at the Daily News as an 18-year-old copyboy, and departed as an 88-year-old legend, ink-stained and proud of it. The depth of the loss may have been best captured by Gallo's fellow icon and Hall of Famer.
"His cartoons were like an institution all these years. It's hard to imagine the Daily News without him," Yogi Berra said.
Former Gov. Mario Cuomo echoed the sentiment.
"He is probably best known for his artistry, which was masterful, but he was much more than that," Cuomo said. "He was just a marvelous human being. He was ... strong when he had to be. He was as sweet as they come and as straight as they come."
Bill Gallo penned some 15,000 cartoons in his Daily News career. The last of them, published April 19, depicted his big-bottomed leading lady, Basement Bertha - patron saint of underdogs everywhere - shopping for an outfit for the Royal Wedding.
Hall of Fame Mets pitcher Tom Seaver called Gallo a unique voice in sports journalism.
"He always had a kind of different take on sports," Seaver said. "You had to know sports to get his cartoons. He provided comic relief on the sports page - enjoy every moment, every day, and then move on."
Gallo began his career in an era when Americans got their news from newspapers, and ended it amid 24-hour news cycles and blogs and tweets.
Whether he was drawing George (General Von Steingrabber) Steinbrenner, Muhammad Ali or fallen cops and firefighters after 9/11, Gallo found true perspective, humor and pathos in a few deft strokes of his pen.
"Bill Gallo was a timeless presence," Mayor Bloomberg said. "He brought smiles to our faces in both victory and defeat."
Gallo weighed in on every sport, but his favorites were boxing and baseball. There are 28 Gallo works on exhibit in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, among them the classic 1979 cartoon commemorating Willie Mays' induction into the Hall.
"Sorry kids, Willie, can't play stickball today," Gallo's staple kid character, Yuchie, said. "He's headed to Cooperstown."
Flags flew at half-staff in honor of Gallo Wednesday at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in upstate Canastota.
"He loved boxers and reviled the charlatans who bled them dry," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, a close pal. "Boxers were like Bill - all heart and skilled with their hands."
Gallo, like so many members of the so-called Greatest Generation, served in World War II, fighting at Iwo Jima and other horrifically bloody battles.
"He just left his job at the Daily News to join the Marines, and then came back when the war ended," Kelly said. "No fuss, no muss. He traded his carbine for pen and ink, and took no prisoners from then on."
Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, said: "Bill Gallo was a genius and a nice human being. ... That ain't chopped liver."
Iconic Jets quarterback Joe Namath still recalls Gallo's rendering of him on a day he was upset about something. "He had me in the locker room, sitting there, and bugs or gnats flying around my head," Namath said, laughing. "I was so down in the dumps, but when I saw that, I had to take the humor to heart. ... He picked me up without him knowing about it."
Thirty-two years after Thurman Munson perished in a plane crash in Ohio, his wife, Diana Munson talked about how sad she was to hear Gallo had died, and how she'll never forget his cartoon after the Yankee captain died.
Gallo drew an image of a mustachioed Munson looking down on home plate with a bat laying beside it, and two kids, in silhouette, walking forlornly away.
"Naw, Yuchie - I just don't feel like playin' ball today," it read.
"In one drawing and one sentence he was able to capture what everyone was feeling that day," she said. "It was overpowering."
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