Anna June Murawinski, mother of longtime Daily News sports cartoonist Ed Murawinski, dies at 96

Anna June Murawinski, the churchgoing, family-loving mother of longtime Daily News sports cartoonist Ed Murawinski, has died. She was 96.

When Murawinski first got the cartoonist gig, his eternally optimistic mother remarked that he could replace the legendary Bill Gallo when Gallo retired. Gallo went on to draw for the Daily News for decades, a don’t-hold-your-breath situation akin to backing up Lou Gehrig.

But Murawinski’s mother wasn’t totally off base. Murawinski went on to have his own lengthy career at The News — 46 years — much to his mother’s delight.

She knew a thing or two about long careers. After her youngest was old enough to go to school, Anna June Murawinski, who lived in New Jersey, took a job as an executive secretary for Rogers & Wells, an international law firm in Manhattan with its headquarters in the Pan Am Building.

“She was going to do it part time,” Murawinski said. “She turned out doing 25 years there.”

She was an invaluable aide to top attorneys, visiting international dignitaries and distinguished firm alumni including future CIA Director William Casey.

Anna June Murawinski was born in Manhattan on June 1, 1926, the youngest of four girls.

“We called them the Four Rosebuds,” Murawinski said. “She was the last of the Rosebuds.”

As a high school student, she was a competitive drummer in one of the city’s drum and bugle corps, and was known to get behind the drums at family weddings.

In 1949 she married Walter Murawinski, a postal worker, in Jersey City, where the couple lived for a few years. They eventually moved to North Bergen, where they would go on to raise five children.

In her lifetime, she was a member of St. Joseph’s of the Palisades in West New York, N.J., as well as Church of Saint Leo the Great in Lincroft, N.J.

Her husband died in 1997. She is mourned by a host of grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

A viewing will be held Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the John E. Day Funeral Home in Red Bank, N.J. A funeral mass will follow on Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. St. Leo the Great Church.

Murawinski said his mother was the go-to person whenever extra prayers were needed, and most of them came unsolicited.

She was known to give every visitor “the bless” — a motion symbolizing the Holy Trinity — when arriving and on departure,” he said.

“She would give the bless to everyone. That was her claim to fame. The last I saw her, I gave her a bless. I think we’re even.”