John Austin McCall (1852-1913)

MCCALL, GARRETT, HUTCHINS, CRONENWETT

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 9/15/2017 at 17:58:18

From Nevada Representative October 3, 1913 (front page)

OBITUARY

JOHN A. McCALL

John A. McCall in his younger years a resident of Nevada and always here a familiar visitor; died Wednesday forenoon in Mercy hospital at Des Moines, and his funeral will be conducted at Dunn's undertaking parlors there at two o'clock Saturday afternoon. The interment will be at Glendale cemetery near that city, where his mother, who was the first wife of Capt. T. C. McCall and a sister of W. S. Garrett, long a well-known citizen of Nevada lies buried. Mr. McCall's death was no surprise to his friends, although his illness had been but a few weeks. It began with an apparently minor trouble in his neck or face but developed into a cancer of the jaw, and after the full nature of the trouble became evident only slight and momentary hopes of checking it were entertained. There was time to call his sister, Mrs. Cronenwett, from California, and she remained with him to the end as did his brothers Fred C. and Ed. M. from Nevada for a great part of the time but about all they could do was to make his last days as comfortable as possible.

Mr. McCall was about 61 years of age, a native, we think of Polk county, but having spent his boyhood and youth in Nevada. From here he went to the State University at Iowa City, where he took an extended course and was graduated quite young from the law department. He practiced for a time in Nevada but removed while still a very young lawyer to Des Moines, where he thereafter continued to practice. He was a man of marked talent and very exceptional culture. As an orator he was very greatly admired, and at the bar his standing was high. He was a member of the leading Des Moines clubs and was very popular among his fellows. He participated more or less in the proceedings of the courts in this county, and always with high credit to himself. He was married as a young man to Georgia Hutchins of this city; but his happiness did not long continue, and his life had appearance of loneliness in which sympathy may have been rarely expressed, but was nevertheless felt. Story county never turned out any brighter and better trained young man than he was, and wherever he chose to exert himself, there he invariably collected credit upon himself and his friends. He was strong in his convictions, and gifted in upholding them, a man of mark and of well-warranted confidence. Perhaps when a man gets beyond sixty he is no longer justified in regarding himself as young but Mr. McCall's friends had never come to think of him as old, and his death impresses them all as unseasonable. He left no family of his own, and his immediate surviving relatives are his sister and brothers already mentioned.