New York Philanthropists Die in Crash in Albania

David B. McCall and Joan “Penny” Mills McCall, international philanthropists and social workers, died Sunday in an automobile accident while doing volunteer work for a refugee program in Albania. David McCall, a Madison Avenue advertising executive, was 71. His wife was 57.

The couple, who lived in New York, died near Kukes, Albania, when their car missed a turn on a winding mountain road in heavy rain. Killed with them were their Albanian driver and the European representative of the organization they were assisting, Refugees International.

Board members of the Washington, D.C.-based organization, the McCalls were on a mission to try to establish regional radio broadcasts to refugees seeking family members.

“Penny and David McCall could have lived a comfortable life surrounded by their family and many friends. Instead, they repeatedly risked their lives in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Balkans to increase public awareness of the plight of people less fortunate than they,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to the Balkans and chairman of Refugees International, a nonprofit organization.

David McCall had been tapped to succeed Holbrooke as chairman. McCall had also worked with and helped establish a number of other nongovernmental organizations, including the Independent Demining Assessment Center, which worked to eliminate land mines; the New York Urban League; the Congress for Racial Equality; the Central Park Conservancy; and Meals on Wheels.

Penny McCall, an arts patron as well as a human rights activist, had been a Refugees International board member for eight years, concentrating on removal of land mines. She supported the work of female and minority artists through her Penny McCall Foundation and was on the board of directors of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. She also supported the Abyssinian Development Corp. in Harlem and was co-chairwoman of 14 Angels Inc.

A Yale dropout, David McCall served in the Army during the Korean War and began his advertising career in the mail room of Young & Rubicam. He then joined Ogilvy & Mather, eventually succeeding founder David Ogilvy as the agency’s chief copywriter and penning such slogans as Maxwell House’s “coffee that tastes as good as it smells.”

In 1961, McCall co-founded the advertising agency McCaffrey & McCall, whose clients included Exxon, Tiffany, Hiram Walker, J.C. Penney, Mercedes-Benz and Norelco. The agency acquired Saatchi & Saatchi in 1983, and McCall left the company a few years later.

The former Joan Partridge Mills, an heiress of the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., or 3M, married McCall in 1978. It was his third marriage and her second.