Bulgaria’s honorary consul in Nevada Robert Miller awarded “Golden Laurel Branch”

Robert Joseph Miller, Bulgaria’s Honorary Consul in Nevada, was awarded the prestigious “Golden Laurel Branch” of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his exceptional merits in maintaining the diplomatic relations between the US and Bulgaria. The award was bestowed on him at a special ceremony in Las Vegas by this country’s Consul-General to Los Angeles Boyko Hristov.

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“I’m flattered. I definitely don’t deserve such a reward but I certainly appreciate it. The time and effort I put into it from the very first moment myself was with Bulgaria. I think the Bulgarian community is very cohesive. They care about each other. And they respect the opportunity to work in conjunction with other Bulgarian Americans,” said the longest serving governor of Nevada and Honorary Consul of Bulgaria Robert Miller in an interview with Radio Bulgaria.

The prize, awarded by Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev, goes to an exceptionally deserving individual, Bulgaria’s Consul-General to Los Angeles Boyko Hristov said for Radio Bulgaria, and added it had been a pleasure to communicate with Robert Miller frequently, and that now he has seen how excited he is to receive this award:

“He is the longest serving governor of the State of Nevada who has been honorary consul of Bulgaria for 20 years now. We met 5 years ago and I can now definitely say he is a colleague and a friend,” Boyko Hristov told Radio Bulgaria’s correspondent in Las Vegas Maria Samichkova.

“Bob Miller is a very special person, very warm hearted, populism is absolutely alien to him. I found out early on that he upholds human values and dedicates his efforts to serious projects. Two decades of hard work to bring the US and Bulgaria closer to such a degree that he now regards Bulgaria as his second homeland. He loves Bulgaria very much, and has been to the country many times. His wife and his family, they too talk about Bulgaria with superlatives. He has helped many of our compatriots here, he has promoted Bulgaria as a tourist destination. As a representative of Bulgarian business here said – he has done a lot to bring the two countries closer in business. Now, during the ceremony, two presidents congratulated Bob Miller – congratulatory addresses came from Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov, with whom they have been friends for many years, and from the 42nd President of the US Bill Clinton.

As a matter of fact, the first visit to Bulgaria by a sitting American president was to a great extent thanks to Bob Miller – the man who convinced President Clinton to pay a visit to Bulgaria. That was the start of an upward trend in bilateral partnership. Bob is too modest, he would never say it but that is a tremendous achievement, after which, he, of course, did a lot of other things as well,” Boyko Hristov says.

Here is what Robert Miller himself remembers about the historic visit to Bulgaria by an American president in November 1999:

“One of the earlier visits I had to Bulgaria, I met with President Stoyanov and he asked me to ask President Clinton to come to Bulgaria during a trade mission. He was aware that he was going to Greece and Turkey. I told him, you know, the Governor is interacting in domestic policy but not in foreign policy but I'll be glad to try and ask him if you want. A couple of weeks later in Washington DC, I was at an event with President Clinton and I talked to him for a couple of minutes and told him what President Stoyanov had said, how Bulgaria had been helpful and cooperative to the US and regional issues. President Clinton thought for a second and said: Yes, I'm going to come and Bob, you're going to go with me. So I was able to be there at a time when President Clinton was speaking to the second largest crowd he'd ever spoken to. It was an enthusiastic moment. It was really a privilege to be able to be there as history was made, the first US president ever to set foot in Bulgaria as well.”

The presidents of the US and Bulgaria Bill Clinton and Petar Stoyanov (Bulgaria, 1999)

Bulgaria has changed right before the eyes of the American governor:

“I've seen a lot of changes in Nevada and I've also seen a lot of changes in Bulgaria,” he says. “When I came to Bulgaria the first time, the airport in Sofia looked like an abandoned military base. Now it's a modern, completely renovated building. Also, the hotels and restaurants and the like have all been upgraded. And especially in the hotels, they've added in air conditioning, which wasn't common at the time because Eastern European tourists didn't care about tourism as far as air conditioning. Western tourists do. And so that's helped broaden the market. And in Las Vegas, we created a committee to advise the tourism and help make the decisions and have representatives from large hotels, from small hotels, from motor vehicles like taxis, etc., and have a broader source of information and recommendations, which has helped Las Vegas grow and be one of the probably most recognized place for tourism in the United States.”

In recent years Robert Miller has never missed the celebration of alphabet and culture day 24 May, organized by the Bulgarian-American Association in Nevada.

“The Bulgarian festival in Las Vegas is what united Bulgarians. The bond between officials and institutions in Nevada, and our compatriots has always been our goal with the festival. The good news is that we now have a date for its next edition – 24 May, 2026. We are still looking for the location,” says the Association’s chairman Stiliyan Mitkov, who was among the guests to the official ceremony at which Robert Miller was awarded the “Golden laurel branch”.

Stiliyan Mitkov, chairman of the Bulgarian-American Association in Nevada and Boyko Hristov

The guests also enjoyed a classical music concert, featuring Penka Kоuneva - composer and pianist, violinists Blagomira Lipari, Svetlin Belneev and Ariana Solotov and Irina Chirkova - cello. "A day to remember," Maria Samichkova from the Bulgarian-American Association in Nevada and a contributor to Radio Bulgaria in Las Vegas told us.