My Parents both attended a Franciscan school, Quincy College in Illinois near their home towns. My mother was a school teacher and later did tutoring. My father earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Notre Dame. I was born in St. Louis, and grew up in Greensburg, PA, where my father was a professor at Seton Hill College over forty years. Education, faith, and family are chief values in my Catholic upbringing. I regard my parents as my first and finest teachers. They always modeled faithful marriage and became active third order Franciscans the last decades of their lives.

 

Sisters of Charity directed my early formation from pre-school through eighth grade at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, located at the highest point in Greensburg. We lived at the foot of that hill, so it was convenient to serve Mass and do odd jobs at the convent. The Charities also founded Seton Hill College on another of the city's seven hills. The campus and fields provided space for boyhood hikes, midnight Christmas Mass, serving funerals of deceased sisters, an annual summer festival, and summer employment in teen years. Growing up in the 1950's and early 1960's with such close family affiliation with the apostolates of a religious order was as normal as water to a child. Now, I regard that unrepeatable time and place a remarkable and rare blessing.

  

The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was the next religious order to bend the twig and provide me home. Given solid family roots each Jacoby child attended a different secondary school, somewhat by my parent's design: my older sister, the public high school; my older brother, the Josephinum seminary; my younger brother, the local Catholic high school. My parents researched an unusual option for their third child. We visited several prep schools, and I was awarded tuition scholarship at Cranwell School in Lenox, MA. It still meant family sacrifice to send me off to this Camelot of 400 acres in the Berkshire Hills. I will always be indebted for this very privileged opportunity to find my wings. It led to a natural progression of accepting a Jesuit scholarship at Boston College.

Boston was my next encampment for continuing formation. Honors seminars included classics in the humanities and training in Synectics™, a creative group problem solving process. It was a liberal arts holiday without any career discernment. I changed my focus from psychology to english, and later added philosophy as a second major. The city and times were my mentors. I explored the museums, concert halls, libraries and used book stores of Bean City and witnessed a crescending social protest to the war in Vietnam and status quo thinking. Summers I returned to the tranquility of Cranwell as a camp counselor. A bachelor of arts, cum laude, gave me no credentials for a job. With a high lottery number for the military draft I returned to Greensburg to seek some volunteer stint on the homefront

Religious Education is an interdisciplinary field that weaves many interests I had explored in college. My home parish offered me a small stipend to direct its CCD program. I was doubly blessed that Sr. Marita Ganley, SC, was assembling a new undergraduate major in this new field and invited me to associate with her department where I met Janet. I found myself riding a new wave of ecclesial minsters who happened to be lay persons. After my internship I took full employment as a youth educator in Michigan, and Janet accepted a parish DRE position in Minnesota. A 30-day directed retreat at Cranwell and other divine intervention led us two religious educators to choose one another. A wedding at Seton Hill's chapel began our life together.

Graduate Studies in Christian tradition and personal integration at St. Mary University in Winona was directed by a priest from the La Crosse Diocese, Tom Etten "59. The philosophical personalism of John Macmurray inspired him to offer a holistic curriculum that included Gestalt group work. I completed most course work for a masters degree in religious education. After moving to Stevens Point a LIMEX study group was organized for further reflection â lâ Bernard Lonergan on Christian tradition, plus cultural analysis, organizational development, and systems thinking--Loyola University granted me a master of pastoral studies. For one semester I took referesher courses with the Institute for Pastoral Studies in Stevens Point. Workshops, building an extensive adult library, and auditing university courses have sustained a lifelong learning quest.