It was a time of major transition for the Republic of Panama as well as for the Flanagan family, who had arrived there from Boston late June, 1982. The Torrijos-Carter Treaty had been signed, and my husband Captain David Flanagan, an engineer with undergraduate and graduate degrees from the US Coast Guard Academy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had been sent by the Coast Guard to the Panama Canal to be Marine Safety Officer. Within six days David became Acting Director, and, shortly, the Director of the Navigation Division of the Panama Canal for three years. David, his teenage daughter Ruth, and I prepared by reading David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas, and took Spanish and protocol classes. Now we were eager for discovery.
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