Portal:Oregon/Selected biography/12
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Tom McCall (1913–1983) was an American politician, and member of the Republican Party. He served two terms as the 30th governor of Oregon from 1967 to 1975. He was known for his environmental policies, passing the country's first "bottle bill" and working to clean the polluted Willamette River.
McCall was born in Massachusetts, the the grandson of copper-king Thomas Lawson and Massachusetts governor and congressman Samuel W. McCall. He graduated from Redmond High School, and enrolled at the University of Oregon, graduating in 1936. McCall moved to Idaho to write for the local paper where he met his future wife, Audrey Owen.
He moved to Portland in 1942, where he worked for The Oregonian. He moved to the paper's radio station until 1949, when he became an assistant to Oregon Governor Douglas McKay. He was elected Oregon Secretary of State in 1964, then governor in 1966 and 1970. McCall later returned to journalism, and was a commentator for a Portland TV station. He made an unsuccessful bid to return to the governorship in 1978, losing in the primary to State Senator Victor G. Atiyeh, who went on to defeat incumbent Robert W. Straub. McCall died of prostate cancer in 1983, and after his death Portland dedicated a park along the Willamette River as Tom McCall Waterfront Park.
