After graduating from Kirkwood High School, Emmet Crane began preparing for the priesthood. He made his solemn profession in DeSoto, Missouri, on August 2, 1924, and was ordained a Catholic Priest of the Redemptorist Order at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on June 24, 1929. He served as a pastor, missionary, professor in Minor and Superior Seminary in Carlisle, Kentucky; St. Louis, Missouri; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Detroit, Michigan. During World War II he entered military service and after completing the Chaplain’s School at Harvard in September 1942, he was commissioned a U.S. Army chaplain. In February 1946 he was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, and then to inactive status in 1950. By the time of his death he had 43 years of profession and 48 years of active service in the priesthood.