Harold Ayres Wylie, Jr. (Hal), born September 16, 1935, in New York City, died June 23, 2022, in Austin. His parents were Harold Ayres Wylie, Sr., and Margaret Cockburn Wylie. He had a younger sister, Enid, and brother, Tom. The family lived in the Bronx and then in Yonkers, New York, until 1947, when they moved to Tucson, Arizona, where Hal attended Tucson High School and the University of Arizona. In 1956 he married Karen Lott, and they went on to have four sons, Doug, Jim, Ed, and Steve. After completing his bachelor’s degree in 1957, Hal worked as Assistant Experiment Station Editor at the UA College of Agriculture until 1959, when he moved with his family to California to begin graduate studies in French at Stanford University. In 1964 they moved again, to Austin, where he was hired to teach in the Department of Romance Languages at UT (later the French and Italian Department) . In addition to teaching French literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he developed and taught courses in Francophone African and Caribbean literature, a new field at the time. He was one of the founders and most active members of the African Literature Association, and served one term as its president. In 1970 Hal and Karen were divorced. In 1971 he married Carolyn Cates, and in 1978 their son Dennis was born. Hal continued to teach at UT until his retirement in 2000, since when he has had the title Associate Professor Emeritus.
In addition to his academic career, Hal was involved in many other activities, including photography, sailing, journalism, and politics. He was a co-chair of the short-lived New Party in 1968 and later a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (a predecessor of Democratic Socialists of America). He was involved in campaigning and fundraising for a number of local Democratic candidates. He was cofounder and coeditor of The Gar, a small “underground” paper that began as a monthly attempt to cover the local cultural and political scene and (after an interesting but otherwise unsuccessful first year) turned into an annual publication distributed at meetings of the African Literature Association.
After a lifelong struggle with asthma/COPD, Hal also developed heart disease, and in the end the combination was more than he could overcome. He was preceded in death by his parents and his first wife, Karen. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn; his sons Doug Wylie (Matt Lund), Jim Wylie, Ed Wylie (Angelica), Steve Wylie (Pam), and Dennis Wylie (Katie Faehl); his sister Enid Scott (Larry) and brother Tom Wylie; grandchildren Michael, Ted, Christopher, and Leah Wylie; six great-grandchildren; and many friends, colleagues, and former students.
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