Roberta B. Heinlen
September 15, 1942 – May 29, 2024
Roberta (“Bobbie”) Bishop Heinlen, age 81, passed away May 29, 2024. A native of Charleston, West Virginia, she graduated from St. Albans High School in St. Albans, WV in 1960. During her high school years, she was a cheerleader and active in multiple clubs. Bobbie attended Morris Harvey College, now the University of Charleston, finishing with a medical technology degree.
She pursued her master’s (biochemistry) and doctoral (immunology) degrees at The Ohio State University and Tulane University, the latter of which included research on organ transplant rejection in Rhesus monkeys. While pursuing her graduate education, she was the laboratory supervisor at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and lectured in biochemistry to first-year medical students at Ohio State. She went on to work in the Greater New Orleans area and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in hospitals and diagnostic laboratories, serving in multiple supervisory positions, including head of Immunology and Technical Director.
After retiring in 2003, she and her husband, Dr. A. Carter Lewis, relocated to Amite County, Mississippi, where she became an avid gardener with a particular love for tropical plants which she cultivated in a large greenhouse. They also traveled in their motorhome coast to coast, where Bobbie taught classes on gemstones and sold custom designed jewelry.
Bobbie was a die-hard Ohio State Buckeye fan and rarely missed a televised football game, decked out head-to-toe in Buckeye gear. She designed game-day jewelry containing actual buckeyes, and was finally successful in growing a red buckeye tree at their property in Mississippi. She spent her final two years closer to family in Auburn, Alabama.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Milward Thomas Bishop and Lena Pridy Bishop.
Surviving are her current husband of 43 years; brother, Tom Bishop (Trish); daughter Stephanie Heinlen (Mark Couzens); stepchildren Perry Lewis (Tammy), Beth Lewis Smith (Drew) and Parker Lewis (Neally), as well as seven grandchildren and one great grandson. She is also survived by her first husband, father of Stephanie Heinlen, Dan L. Heinlen (Gelene).