Cullman native Martin McDowell is about to enter his 20th year of service in the U.S. State Department, but becoming a foreign service officer wasn’t his original plan for a career.

“I kind of found out about the foreign service and work at the State Department by accident,” he said.

McDowell was born and raised in Cullman. After graduating from Cullman High School in 1987, he went on to the University of Alabama, graduating in 1996 with a Masters of Arts in Education.

One of McDowell’s friends told him about the written exam that was required for foreign service, piquing his curiosity and pointing him in that direction. After taking and passing the exam, he passed an oral interview and joined the State Department in 1998.

McDowell’s interest in foreign service also was influenced by an international trip he had made a couple of years earlier.

When he was 24, McDowell went overseas to teach English in the Czech Republic. The experience, he said, opened his eyes to the world outside Alabama and the United States.

“That was kind of a life-changing experience for me,” he said. “That was one of the things that got me interested in foreign service.”

That was also where he learned that he had an affinity for learning new languages.

While in the Czech Republic,McDowell lived in a town, about the size of Cullman, which had no native English speakers. He said he had to learn Czech to be able to do anything while he lived there, and he did it through daily conversation with the people around him.

Today, McDowell speaks Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Russian, Romanian and Spanish, and all of those languages have been useful in his time as a foreign service officer.

As a political officer, McDowell’s primary job is to follow what’s happening in the country in which he is posted, and how that affects U.S. interests.

“In order to understand what it is you’re advising on, you need to develop contacts,” he said.

By speaking their language, foreign service officers can develop a trusting relationship with people in their host countries, opening the path to information that can help the United States stay on top of emerging developments.

McDowell has served in overseas posts in Slovakia, El Salvador, Moldova and Slovenia, and has spent the last four years in Washington D.C. He will be going overseas again next summer to serve as the Executive Chief of Mission in Moldova.

One thing that people usually don’t realize is that foreign service officers are not all serving in cushy locations, he said.

“There are people who are doing real hardship assignments and are working often in war zones that are too dangerous to take their families,” he said.

If people ever visit the State Department in Washington D.C., they can see a wall with the names of hundreds of men and women who have given their lives in foreign service for the United States.

The work that McDowell and other State Department employees do is not just focused on foreign diplomacy and the economy, but also on assisting American citizens who are visiting overseas.

Many Americans planning trips overseas use the State Department website to research the country where they’re headed, and will use the State Department to secure a visa and passport, he said. The State Department also helps Americans who wish to study abroad or adopt a child from overseas.

And if an American is arrested or detained while overseas, it’s people like McDowell who will provide assistance.

McDowell said he has personally assisted in cases like those, including one during his last posting in Moldova.

He recounts an incident in which he assisted an American citizen who was visiting Moldova, and who’d decided to drive into Transnistria — a breakaway region of the country that had declared its independence.

McDowell said the American’s visit coincided with a rise in tensions between Moldova and Transnistria, and he was held at the border until McDowell was able to speak to the guards who were holding him and secure his safe passage.

When he called, the American was panicked and scared, and gunfire could be heard in the background from guards firing their guns in the air, McDowell said.

“I wouldn’t say that it was my intervention that made it happen, but it was it was kind of scary, and touch and go, for a little while,” he said.

For a career that he never really planned to get into, McDowell can’t think of something else he’d rather be doing.

“This whole career has been an unanticipated blessing of the largest magnitude, and it’s an experience that I wouldn’t change for anything,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine what I would have done [otherwise].”

McDowell said he is preparing for his next assignment to Moldova, a place whose diplomatic climate remains fraught with questions — including neighboring nations Romania and Ukraine, as well as actions that Russia has taken to prop up the separatist regime in Transnistria.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

McDowell said foreign service is an American institution that too many people are not aware of, and he is proud to have contributed to it.

“I’m proud of it,” he said. “I’m proud to have been a part of it.”

The State Department is not as big as some people may think, and with the current administration’s plans for budget cuts, it may get even smaller, McDowell said.

If America wants other nations to help with its fights against terrorism or making economic deals, or needs to know how another country’s decision makers may react to an international development, it’s State Department officials who will provide guidance to the administration, he said.

“Right now, when questions are being asked about what should we be doing, where are our priorities, I hope people will think about the important work that people in the foreign service are doing,” he said.