Bonnie Miles

Bonnie Miles grew up in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Salem College (NC) with a B.A. degree in history. After college, she worked as an adoption caseworker for The Children’s Home Society of Virginia in Richmond where she met her future husband, Bob Miles (deceased 2022).  He was completing medical school and they married in 1969 between his pediatric internship and residency.

Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force, a move to Lajes Field Air Base, Terceira Island, the Azores, Portugal, followed the completion of Bob’s residency. In the Azores, Bonnie worked with marionettes, performing puppet shows for American and Portuguese children.

They returned to Virginia in 1973 and settled in Roanoke, Virginia, where Bob joined an established pediatric practice. Until the birth of their first son, R. Blake in 1975, followed by son Laird in 1977, Bonnie continued her work with the Children’s Home Society, this time at the Roanoke office.

After seven years in Roanoke, the Miles family moved to Rochester, MN, where Bob enrolled at the Mayo Clinic in a two-year fellowship in allergy and immunology.  Upon completion of the fellowship, they moved again, this time to Lynchburg where Bob opened his allergy/immunology practice and Bonnie worked as office manager for the practice.  They both retired in 2007.

Retired, Bonnie pursued a long-held interest for bats. It started with a Bat Conservation International Workshop in Arizona followed by workshops in Kentucky and Texas.  Her interest became a passion as she studied bats and captured them for population surveys.  She spent seven years as a permitted bat rehabilitator for Virginia Wildlife Resources and kept injured, orphaned, and ill bats in her laundry room, administering aid with the goal of release back into the wild.  With her expertise, Bonnie has presented over 120 lectures on bats in seven states and one foreign country.

Bonnie became a certified Virginia Master Naturalist with a graduation project on entomophagy—the consumption of insects.  For this she baked 2000 meal worms, ground them up, and used them to make chocolate chip cookies.  As a result, most people decline her dinner invitations.

Today, Bonnie continues performing marionette shows in the Lynchburg area, primarily for nursery schools and some adult facilities.  She is a member of First Presbyterian Church and sings in the Chancel Choir.  She likes to read, embroider, and dabble in crafts.  On her travels to six of the seven continents her experiences with wildlife were always at the top of a list of highlights.  Examples include the 20 million bats in Bracken Cave, Texas, where the guano is 70 feet deep, the big five in Africa (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and Cape buffalo), and the Komodo dragons in Indonesia.