In this interview from 1986 journalist from Life Magazine Cheryl McCall discusses the profound impact of her photo essay "Streets of the Lost," which delves into the lives of runaway children and teenagers surviving on the streets of America and how it was turned into the documentary "Streetwise". McCall also discusses working with photographer Mary Ellen Mark and the challenges of documenting Willie Nelson's life.
Writer Cheryl McCall was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, on May 7, 1950. One of eight children to a steelworker father and a mother who worked as a waitress. As a student at Wayne State University in Detroit, McCall became the first freshman and first female editor of “The South End” campus newspaper. Her editorials against the Vietnam War in Detroit's Wayne State College paper led then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to brand her a security threat (she kept the note as a badge of honor). She went from writing about social change in college to grisly murders as a night cops reporter for the Detroit News by the age of 20. She quit the Detroit News and hitchhiked around Denmark and England, taking a job as a literary editor. In 1973, she came back to the U.S., where she wrote powerful stories for LIFE and People Magazine, often trumpeting the plight of children. She was a producer on Streetwise (1984). This gritty documentary looked at the lives of teenagers living on the streets of Seattle, born from the Life magazine exposé by McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark. McCall eventually gave up journalism for Yale Law School to become a lawyer. In 1990, McCall opened her law office in downtown Nevada City, specializing in family law. She had one daughter named Jessie. McCall died on October 25, 2005, in Nevada City, California, USA.
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Cheryl McCall, Journalist, Life Magazine
Interview Date: July 31, 1986
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