By Cassandra Taylor, Publications Assistant
At Commencement on Saturday, May 16, 2026, President William Fahey conferred honorary doctorates on Glenn and Virginia Arbery, both friends of the College and former faculty members. Glenn Arbery, PhD, taught literature at Thomas More College from 1986 to 1997, while Virginia Arbery, PhD, served on the faculty and as the Director of Admissions from 1986 to 1993.
The Arbery’s visit to the College after so many years was poignant and profound. “It is beyond my capacities to express what our return to Thomas More College meant to me,” said Dr. Virginia Arbery. “The whole experience was among those rare ‘tender mercies’ in life—unexpected and undeserved.”
Dr. Glenn Arbery also found a kind of mercy in the opportunity to revisit the place where they had lived, taught, and raised their children. “It was more than an honor to return to the beautiful New England campus—the White House; the barn; the shed whose date of 1726 in white paint now marks 300 years; the ageless, hollow apple tree,” Dr. Glenn Arbery commented. “Being on campus felt like a Homeric nostos, a homecoming, at the acceptable time in God’s mercies.”
Friendship and community in pursuit of the academic life—still an aspiration and a hallmark of the life of Thomas More College—stand out in Dr. Virginia Arbery’s memories. “The College, as old as our marriage, holds a place of complex memories of professional and intellectual growth,” she reflected. “With the TMC community, we raised our family of eight, deepened as professors in the prime of our years, and shared in the most formative ones with a splendid and unforgettable group of young people, many of whom remain our dearest friends.”
While it was their first time back on campus in many years, the Arberys each returned to Merrimack with an eye toward the College’s future. Dr. Glenn Arbery encouraged the Class of 2026 in his Commencement address and spoke from the heart about this moment of presidential transition. Dr. Virginia Arbery agreed, “Under Drs. William and Amy Fahey, this small College has become a magnet for likeminded Catholic thinkers who see in its future the hope of Catholic higher education.” She remarked on the “growth and stability” that the College has demonstrated since its founding in 1978, and expressed “confidence that the intellectual legacy protected there not only will be resilient but will develop in unexpected and beautiful dimensions.”
The Arberys each closed on a note of thanksgiving. “We are deeply grateful to Thomas More College for these honorary doctorates,” remarked Dr. Glenn Arbery, “and to William and Amy Fahey for their great kindness to us.”
Glenn and Virginia Arbery both teach at Wyoming Catholic College, where Dr. Glenn Arbery served as president from 2016 to 2023. Besides his scholarly work, he is the author of a trilogy of novels published by Wiseblood Books: Bearings and Distances, Boundaries of Eden, and Gates of Heaven. Dr. Virginia Arbery is a Richard Weaver Fellow and a Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. The Arberys share eight children and twenty-five grandchildren, and they won the Circe Institute’s Russell Kirk Paideia Prize together in 2010.
For further reading:
Glenn Arbery to Deliver 2026 Commencement Address at Thomas More College
