McCall was an illustrator for Life magazine in the 1960s, created promotional artwork for Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Richard Fleischer’s production Tora! Tora! Tora! and worked as an artist for NASA, documenting the history of the Space Race. McCall was also production illustrator on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The character Commander William Riker expressed admiration for the work of “Bob McCall” in one episode of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

McCall’s work can be found on U.S. postage stamps, and also NASA mission patches such as for Apollo 17.^[1] His murals grace the walls of the National Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art, The Pentagon, Epcot, and Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. McCall was also commissioned by The Walt Disney Company to do a painting called “The Prologue and The Promise” for the Epcot attraction, Horizons in 1983. Guests could see the mural at the end of the attraction as they exited. ^[2]

McCall died in 2010 of heart failure in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is survived by his wife Louise, their two daughters, Linda and Catherine, and four grandchildren.

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