Jay's father, Jack was a drilling contractor who took a rig to the gas country of western Kansas, but later sold out to his partners, the Babb brothers.  In 1942 he formed C & G Drilling with Dick Cook.  Initially most of their drilling activity was in the Great Bend area, including a number of tests for Pierce Musgrove.  Jay says that is when he first encountered Albert Abercrombie, who was a member of the Musgrove organization at the time.  Jay's mother was a homemaker and still resides in Wichita.  She is 96 years of age.

      Jay has two sisters: Ann Salome who lives in Lawrence with her husband, Bill and Carol Hessling who resides in Overland Park and a brother, Tom who lives in Oklahoma City.   Jay’s early schooling was at Fairmount Grade School and he continued his education at Roosevelt Jr. High until the middle of the eighth grade, when the family moved to a different area in Wichita.  He completed the eighth grade at Robinson.  Jay then spent the next four years at Wichita East High School graduating in 1946. 

     Because he had been exposed to the "oil fields" at an early age, he had made the decision that he wanted to be a geologist.  His plan was to enroll at the University of Oklahoma, but he received word from the university that there wasn't any dormitory  space available so he enrolled for one year at the University of Wichita where he pledged Phi Sigma, a local fraternity.  The next year he was able to enroll at the University of Oklahoma where he joined the Sigma NU fraternity.  One of his fraternity brothers was Harry Larsh, later to become a respected and well-known geologist in Wichita.

     Jay's advisor at OU was Dr. Carl Moore who persuaded him to enroll in Geological Engineering.  Jay believes that the engineering portion of his degree served well in his later career in activities such as the completion of wells etc.

     When asked what professor influenced him the most, Jay replies that Dr. Moore would be the one in part based on his advice to take Geological Engineering.  While at OU, Jay had as lab instructors Rick Clinton and Al Siemens currently a KGS member.  Because of OU's decision not to accept some of his credit hours from WU, it was necessary for Jay to stay an extra year at OU and this delayed his graduation until the spring of 1951.   After graduation, Jay interviewed with several companies and received an offer of employment from Humble Oil and Refining.  He was assigned to the Houston office to do map work in the Gulf Coast area.  After receiving field training from a geologist in Beaumont, the company sent him to do a field study of an area near Freeport.  Later Humble assigned several areas including Conroe, Galveston Bay to Jay to provide the geological input for Humble's operations in those areas.

     After one and one-half years with Humble, Jay informed the company that he wished to return to Kansas, having in mind eventually a career as an independent geologist.  Humble offered to transfer Jay to their sister company, Carter Oil which had operations in Kansas, but Jay says that "Carter really wasn't doing anything" and there didn't appear to be that much of a future with Carter.  He returned to Kansas where he met Bob Aitken who shared office space with E. K. Edminston at the time.  Bob persuaded Jay to work in Edminston's office spotting maps, which he did for three months.