Jack was raised a Protestant. His parents were Baptist. He sang in the Methodist choir and he attended a Presbyterian Bible school and a Quaker grammar school. Mary Ellen was brought up Catholic. Here father was not Catholic but he dutifully took the children to Mass. Jack and Mary Ellen bet in college. After he returned from the Korean War they were married. For several years they attended separate churches, until Jack entered the Catholic Church in 1961. He was ordained a deacon in 1982.