Eugenio Chang-Rodríguez, Professor Emeritus of Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, was a Member of the Executive Board of the International Linguistic Association (ILA) and the Editorial Board for the Association's journal, WORD. He died on August 4.
The ILA, originally known as the Linguistic Circle of New York, had its roots in the Prague Linguistic Circle. Eugenio became a member in 1956-regularly attending the monthly lectures and the annual conferences, bearing witness in 1969 to the change of the group's name to the International Linguistic Association, and serving as ILA's president from 1969 to 1972 and again in later periods until 2008. In 1985, he was selected to join WORD's Editorial Board and remained in that role until his passing, 34 years later. Perhaps one of Eugenio's greatest contributions to the ILA was his scholarly documentation of its history: In the third volume of Entre dos Fuegos (2005), Eugenio dedicated the entire first chapter to the history of the ILA. Along with our gratitude for Eugenio's professional and intellectual support to the ILA, we wish to remember and celebrate him for his warmth, his cordial and respectful presence on the Board, and his generous mentorship of students and junior colleagues.
Eugenio Chang-Rodríguez spent over 60 years of his life contributing in these various ways to the ILA. The ILA community will miss our esteemed member and friend.