Dates

• Existence: 1935-

Biographical History

Henry Landon Miles (1935- ) worked as a Foreign Service Officer and consultant. After retirement he and his wife volunteered at LDS temples, the Provo Crisis Center, and at the BYU Family History Library.

Henry Landon Miles, the first of four sons of Henry Miles and Amelia Iva Landon, was born on March 2, 1935 in Blackfoot, Idaho. He served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Western Canada from 1955 to 1957. After he returned from his mission, he received an associates degree from Ricks College in 1959. In 1960, he married Carol Polatis, a legal secretary and student. A year later, Henry received his bachelors degree in business at Idaho State University, while Carol continued work as a legal secretary.

After graduation, Henry and Carol moved to Virginia where he attended the engineer officers' course at Fort Belvoir. Afterwards, Henry worked for the Navy Department and attended graduate school at George Washington University. Carol worked for the Pan American Sulfur Company and continued to work on her degree at the University of Virginia. In 1965, they and their two children moved to Bolivia, and a year later, Henry was transferred to Vietnam. Carol went to Blackfoot with the two children, where she gave birth to their third child. In 1967, they returned to Virginia, where Henry continued to work and study.

In the spring of 1968, Henry received his MA in economics at American University. In the fall, Carol gave birth to their fourth child. In 1969, Henry again joined the Foreign Service and served with the Agency for International Development overseas in Ecuador until 1973, and then Paraguay until about 1979. During this time Henry served in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in various positions, including counselor to three mission presidents. When he returned to Washington, D.C. in 1979, he worked as an evaluation officer for the African Bureau and finished his career as Officer in Charge of Indonesia and South Pacific Affairs. In 1987, he retired and then served as a consultant in El Salvador for a year, while his wife remained in Virginia where she worked for a real estate management firm.

Carol remained very busy through the years. She worked for an international consulting firm, served in the Relief Society (as president various times) and on various mission boards, and received her associates degree in philosophy. In Paraguay, she served as president of Las Amigas, the organization for North American women.

In 1988, Henry and Carol moved to Orem. Henry entered Brigham Young University to complete a masters degree in English that he had begun at George Mason University in Virginia, and Carol entered BYU to complete her bachelor's degree in Anthropology. Both completed their degrees in 1994. Henry's long time interest in John Horne Miles culminated in a master's thesis devoted to him and his family.

Carol and Henry enjoy five children and seventeen grandchildren. Currently, Carol is a secretary in the Cherry Hill Stake Relief Society in Utah and manages the Sears office of H&R Block during the tax season and Henry works for her as a tax preparer. Their volunteer work has included the women's crisis center in Provo, the Provo and Timpanogos temples and the BYU Family History Library. Carol and Henry's current family history venture is recording the lives of two lines of relatives of the generation ahead of them before they are all gone.

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