McCall also became known for his colorful rhetoric and for creative problem-solving, notably sponsoring the Vortex I music festival and implementing the country's first odd–even gasoline rationing program during the 1973 oil crisis.

After his response to the oil crisis gained him national recognition, he toured the country promoting the "Oregon Story" as an example for other states to follow, and publicly mulled a third party run for president.

This bicoastal upbringing caused him to develop an unusual accent that he characterized as being "a cross between Calvin Coolidge and a Texas Ranger"; his voice would become an asset, setting him apart during his later careers as a public speaker.

[5] After five years in Moscow, he was encouraged to leave in March 1942; upheaval in the UI athletic department the previous year (firing of football head coach Ted Bank (also athletic director) and basketball head coach Forrest Twogood) brought continuing negative criticism by McCall and his boss thought that he should advance his career elsewhere.

McCall was told by the military that he was not eligible for enlistment (due to bad knees and a recurring hernia) and journalists, still primarily men, were in short supply.

[1] McCall later put his career on hold for military service in the U.S. Navy, where he served as a battle correspondent aboard the cruiser USS St. Louis in the Pacific Theater.

[6] While working on a story, an official of radio station KGW (owned by The Oregonian) approached McCall about reading a public service announcement over the air.

In November 1956 he followed colleague Ivan Smith out the door during a dispute with station management over placement of a sponsor's product on the news set.

In November 1962, McCall produced and hosted an ambitious KGW-TV documentary which graphically portrayed the poor condition of the Willamette River and air quality throughout Oregon.

KGW repeated the program in January 1963 on the eve of the opening of the legislative session, and the 1963 Legislature was spurred to some of Oregon's early attempts at combating pollution.

McCall made his first run for office in 1954, winning the Republican nomination for Oregon's third district seat over eight-term incumbent Homer D. Angell.

During his first term, McCall lead a cleanup of pulp mill pollution in the Willamette, championed legislation that strengthened public ownership of Oregon's beaches, dealt with a major riot at the state penitentiary, and served as an international monitor for the 1967 South Vietnamese presidential election.

The conservative American Legion had scheduled a convention in Portland later that summer; local antiwar groups were organizing a series of demonstrations at the same time under the name of the "People's Army Jamboree" and expected to draw up to 50,000 protesters.

The feared violent clash between the antiwar groups and the Legion was avoided, and McCall was re-elected in November with 56% of the vote, again defeating Bob Straub.

Whenever McCall's group camped for the night on the Idaho side, Oregon Senate President John Burns, a Democrat, became acting governor.

[15] During the summer of 1973, Oregon began to suffer from energy shortages, several months before the rest of the United States was affected by the OPEC oil embargo.

The state's power grid was heavily reliant on hydroelectricity and an unusually dry winter had left reservoir levels critically low.

As the oil shock began to affect the rest of the country, Oregon's conservation methods seemed prescient, and the state's leaders were applauded by national media.

Taking advantage of the attention, McCall launched a national tour to promote the reforms he'd overseen as an inspiration for other states to follow, referring to the package as the "Oregon Story."

McCall was talked up in the media as a potential candidate for president, and later recalled that leading political figures such as Clare Boothe Luce and Eugene McCarthy had encouraged him to mount a third-party bid for the office.

[16] Biographer Brent Walth doubts that McCall was ever serious about making the Third Force a third party or running for president, and believes that he was simply enjoying the spotlight and using it to promote his political ideas.

[22] In 1969, McCall played a major role in the founding of SOLV, an environmental non-profit organization whose goal is to "build community through volunteer action to preserve this treasure called Oregon.