Billie Ripley

I was born in the Panama, Canal Zone to a Panamanian mother and a father from the state of Alabama. I am a wife, mother, grandmother and retired teacher. I left Panama when I was nineteen and have never been back. Some of my best childhood memories are of sitting at the kitchen table eating and listening to my mother and her sisters chatting away in Spanish. We spoke English in our home. (Actually my best "Spanish class' was trying to understand the women so I could get the scoop on the gossip.) My college years were spent in Alabama with my father's family.