The Foreign Service Journal, December 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2019 55 Americans’Welfare IT’SALLINA DAY’SWORK Charles “Tom” Owens joined the Foreign Service in July 1963, took Spanish language training at FSI, and then worked in the Security and Consular Affairs Bureau and as factotum for the Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy. He was assigned to Embassy Buenos Aires as protection and welfare officer (1966-1968), and then as an intelligence analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (through 1970). Following an out-of-agency assignment to the National Science Foundation, Mr. Owens resigned from the Foreign Service in 1971 to work at NSF. He was an active participant in U.S.–Soviet Union nonproliferation programs from their beginnings, on detail to State and with the nonprofit Civilian Research and Development Foundation where he served in many roles, including as president and CEO. Later he worked at the Washington Advisory Group and its successors on issues of international cooperation in scientific R&D and education, primarily on the establishment of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as a co-ed, international institution in Saudi Arabia (2007-2013) and with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (2015-2017). Mr. Owens resides in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Susan. A consular officer remembers the personalities he encountered on the job. BY CHARL ES “ TOM” OWENS FEATURE I n my days as a Foreign Service officer, consular work was considered of less value and consequence than other embassy work. My time as protection and wel- fare officer (PWO) in Buenos Aires, however, showed me how wrong that assumption could be. It brought me into contact with interesting people, not to men- tion vexation, humor and humanity in unpredict- able, even unfathomable, ways. These people added immeasurably to my matura- tion—both professional and personal. Among the many memo- rable individuals who crossed my path in Argentina were two in particular—I’ll call them “Morris Cohen” and “Conrad von Blanton.” Their stories I share here. I suspect that fewer opportunities exist today to do this kind of work with the same discretion and latitude I had back then, but am sure that today’s PWOs are still finding ways to get things done for Americans abroad in need of help.