Esther Odell Hays was born in Philadelphia, Pa. on September 12, 1920. She spent her first five years in Habana, Cuba, after which the family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where she was educated in the public schools. She graduated from New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College), Rutgers University, in 1942 with a B. A. degree in French, with a Spanish minor. Since graduation she has lived in Cuba, Now York City and Puerto Rico where she taught English, Spanish, French and Latin at the pilot school on the campus of Inter American University, where her husband was Associate Professor of Mathematics.

     She began her graduate work in Spanish at the Middlebury (Vermont) Spanish Summer School in 1965 and later enrolled in the University of Maine Graduate School. She is a member of the Modern Language Association, the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese and the American Association of University Women. In 1970 she was elected to membership in the Spanish Honor Society, Sigma Delta Pi and in 1971 was awarded first prize for her essay, "Vista de Toledo por Lazarillo de Tormes," an entry in a literary contest sponsored by Sigma Delta Pi.

     She is a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in Comparative