June Parker Wilson, 87, Was Writer, Translator

June Parker Wilson, of New York city and Chilmark, died on March 6 of Alzheimer's disease. She was 87 years old.

Ms. Wilson was a freelance writer whose work was often published in the Hers columns and travel section of The New York Times. She translated more than 10 books from French to English, most often in collaboration with Walter Benn Michaels, including the best-selling Papillon, by Henri Charrière. In the early 1980s, she was a regular guest on the WNYC Senior Edition radio show.

Ms. Wilson was born in Oakland, Calif., the daughter of Carleton H. Parker and Cornelia Stratton Parker, a writer on travel and labor and author of An American Idyll, an account of her marriage to Dr. Parker, an academic and a well-known labor expert who died in the flu epidemic in 1918. Ms. Wilson was educated in Cambridge and Geneva, Switzerland. She was graduated from Bennington College in 1939, and served on its board. She received an M.A. in French from Columbia University.

Her husband of 51 years, the late Kenneth Wilson, died in 1991. He was senior editor of the Reader's Digest until his retirement in 1975.

Ms. Wilson is survived by her daughters, Cornelia Higginson and Lee Badger, both of New York city, and Meredith Michaels of Amherst, and all three of Aquinnah; nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Her late brother, Carleton Parker, was a longtime resident of West Tisbury. Her late niece, Josephine Parker Alexander, was a summer resident of Vineyard Haven.