BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Lucy Therina Briggs was born in Washington, D. C.
on December 20, 1930, the daughter of a Foreign Service
Officer, Ellis Ormsbee Briggs, and Lucy Barnard Briggs.
Her childhood was divided between Latin American and the
United States. In 1952 she graduated from Smith College
in Northampton, Massachusetts with a B. A. in history,
having spent her junior year in Geneva, Switzerland.
After two years of secretarial and volunteer work in
Korea, Miss Briggs passed the Foreign Service examina-
tions and entered the Service in 1957, later serving
in the bureaus of inter-American and educational and cul-
tural affairs of the Department of State.

Undertaking graduate studies while working full
time at the State Department, Miss Briggs completed the
Master of Science degree in linguistics at Georgetown
University in 1969. In the following year she left the
Foreign Service to pursue doctoral studies in linguistics
at the University of Florida in Gainesville, working with
the Aymara Language Materials Project under the auspices
of a grant from the Office of Education of the Department

of Health, Education, and Welfare.

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