Colleague and friend A. Leslie Willson Jr., highly respected educator and translator of contemporary German literature, died December 28, 2007, in Austin.

Among many accomplishments, he served for eight years as chairman of the German Department at UT-Austin, and for 20 years he edited Dimension, a groundbreaking bilingual literary magazine dedicated to the presentation of contemporary German-language authors. He was a co-founder and first president (1978 – 1979) of the American Literary Translators Association. He also served as president of the American Translators Association (1991 – 1993). He was recognized for his scholarly work with awards from the Goethe Institute and German government. An obituary appeared in the Austin American-Statesman.