David McCall, creator of Schoohouse Rock, died April 18th in a car accident
near Kukes, Albania, along with his wife, Penny, and Refugees
International's European representative Yvette Pierpaoli and the car's
Albanian driver. The McCalls were en route from Tirana to Kukes, the
primary reception point for Kosovar refugees. They were on a mission for
Refugees International, the Washington, D.C.-based organization on whose
board Mr. and Mrs. McCall served. Part of the mission was to explore
providing region-wide help through radio broadcasts to refugees seeking to
locate family members. The accident was the result of bad weather and
treacherous road conditions. Mr. McCall, 71, was a partner in the New
York-based communications consulting and advertising firm, Shepardson Stern
+ Kaminsky. He was a renowned figure in the advertising world, having been
the chief copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather and the co-founder of his own
agency, McCaffrey & McCall. Mr. McCall began his advertising career in the
mailroom of Young & Rubicam after leaving Yale University in 1951. From
Y&R, he joined Ogilvy & Mather, where he spent ten years, eventually
succeeding founder David Ogilvy as the agency's chief copywriter. During
his tenure at O&M, Mr. McCall developed campaigns for such clients as
Sears, Hathaway shirts and Maxwell House coffee. For Maxwell House, he
wrote the line, ``Coffee that tastes as good as it smells.'' In 1961, Mr.
McCall left O&M to co-found the advertising agency McCaffrey & McCall, Inc.
The agency's clients included Exxon, Tiffany, Hiram Walker, J.C. Penney,
The Hartford Insurance Company, Mercedes-Benz and Norelco. Among the many
campaigns the agency developed was the name change from Esso to Exxon. He
also created the television commercial featuring Santa Claus sledding
downhill on a Norelco electric shaver. In 1973, he created SCHOOLHOUSE
ROCK, a series of 3-minute animated educational segments that originally
aired on the ABC television network during Saturday and Sunday morning
cartoons from 1973 to 1985, and again in 1993. McCall originally presented
the SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK idea to Michael Eisner, who at the time was serving as
ABC's vice president for children's television programming. The series won
four Emmy Awards.