Dcn. Dan Dowler

Electrical engineers like Dan Dowler look for ways to harness the power of electricity to make our daily work easier, our lives more efficient and our communication faster.

Dowler has spent more than 25 years designing electrical systems for buildings, with safety, reliability and energy efficiency at the forefront. For much of that time, he didn’t realize that somewhere deep inside he was hoping for a spark, but not of the electrical variety.

Dowler was born and raised near Chillicothe in a family that, while quite patriotic, was not attached to a particular religion.

“My family didn’t really have a deep belief in God,” he said. “We lived out in the country and the church bus would come around and pick my brother and I up to go to church in the city, so I did learn about Jesus.”

During the middle school years, a friend’s family took Dowler to a country Methodist church and, while not actually becoming Methodist, he regularly attended the church’s services.
After high school, Dowler felt as though he was spinning his wheels.

“I was going in circles and not getting anything done. I needed discipline,” he said. “The Navy really runs in my family, so I thought, ‘My dad did the Navy, so maybe it will help me.’ My dad dropped out of high school and went into the Navy. He made something out of his life with what he learned from that experience, and he did well.”

Dowler has more than a half-dozen relatives who served in the military. The Navy, where he learned to be an electrician, seemed like the right choice and gave him the discipline needed to be an adult.

“In the Navy, they had church services in boot camp and I had said I was Methodist, so I went to the services and it wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced,” Dowler said. “The preacher was Baptist, so I asked him, ‘How does this work, because the Methodists had always taught me it’s all about the method. You do things in a certain way or you go to hell.’ He said, ‘It’s OK. You can worship with all of the Protestants for now and return later.’”

That experience set Dowler on an exploration of different faiths.

“The Methodists make a big deal that worship has to be one way, but this other guy is telling me ‘Don’t worry, it can be different.’ I got turned off from Christianity,” he said. “so I started looking for something else: Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism.”

After leaving the Navy, Dowler earned a degree in electrical engineering from Ohio University and was working as a controls engineer, still unsettled on a religion, when he met his wife, Kathy.

“I looked at these religions, but nothing hit the spark until Kathy took me to the Catholic church and then everything was crystal clear,” Dowler said. “Until I met her, I didn’t realize how much God was missing. I had been resisting God and looking for happiness everywhere.”

Thanks to the current of faith he saw in his wife, Dowler converted to Catholicism. He and Kathy have one daughter.

Dowler feels the best move he ever made in life was to become Catholic.

“Before I was Catholic I was really lost,” he said. “I did everything you’re not supposed to do. I was the ultimate sinner. My life took an incredible turn when I became Catholic.”