When Jackie was nine, the family moved to the nearby town of Little Falls, a quintessential American town that thrived during the boom years following World War II.  Jackie recalls that living in Great Falls "was easy.  It was fun.  People liked each other.  It was small town America…I played [trumpet] in the band in high school and if we won a [home]  football game, then the band would march from the high school to the center of town, about a mile away…and then we’d turn around and come back.  Now, mind you, that was the main street of the town.  It was closed to traffic while we had this parade.  That wouldn’t happen today….It was a special time, a different time.  We rode our bikes everywhere, we played in the street, we walked to school….It was before the Vietnam War, before that divided everything.  The war changed everything.”

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      Jackie’s father Chuck had a secure job with the power company and over time worked his way up to Safety Supervisor.   Although many women of that era stayed home, Jackie’s mother did not.   Fran began to work outside the home, first in a jewelry store and then in a laboratory that manufactured the hormone therapy drug Premarin.  Jackie attributes this second income for later paying her college tuition and preventing her from acquiring student loan debt.  It was a time, she says, when families could do that and live within their means, unlike today. 

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     As for politics, both of Jackie’s parents identified as Democrats and so she naturally thought of herself as a Democrat.  In fact, politics was a big influence in Jackie's life from an early age.  For one, while her dad's whole family were all Democrats, all of her mother's family were Republicans.  Fortunately, the family did not consider their political differences an issue.   Secondly, when Jackie was 12, her father ran for the school board.  He lost, but city leaders in Little Falls encouraged him to run for city commissioner as a Republican since that was the majority party.  He decided to be true to himself and ran as a Democrat.  The first time he lost but ran again and won, ultimately serving a few terms as city commissioner and even becoming the mayor for a while.  Then in 1972 he ran for freeholder, a Dutch term used in New Jersey for county commissioner.

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     Jackie vividly remembers campaigning with her father and mother.  It was a family act, which contrasted with the other candidates who typically did not bring their wives and children to events.  The Dormans were all in it together:  “That got him a lot of votes….We would go together to events and, since he was a golfer, we’d pass out [divot repair tools] with ‘Dorman Fore Freeholder’ written on them to give to the men...and emery boards with ‘Dorman’ printed on them for the women….And so you’d go to these events and pass out this stuff that had your name on it and you’d say hi to everybody…It was fun!  It was good!.... My dad was a good politician and knew how to handle people.  He was a little bit of an entertainer, a little bit of a ham” and that helped him win elections.