Why a Homeschool Dad Serves on a Public School Board | Tom McFadden

On this episode of Anchored, Jeremy is joined by Tom McFadden, Vice President of Enrollment at Christendom College. The two discuss Tom’s journey in finding Christendom College as an international student. They talk about Christendom’s new president, Dr. George Harne, and the difficulty of adhering to a school’s mission amid a culture of compromise. The two also dive into Tom’s unique situation as a father of eleven homeschooled kids who serves on a public school board and his reason for why public schools shouldn’t be abandoned altogether.  

Transcript

Jeremy Tate (00:00.794)
Folks, welcome back to the Anchor Podcast. I am especially excited about our guest today. One of my dear friends, the Vice President of Enrollment at Christendom College, Tom McFadden. Tom is the father of 11 kiddos. He's a graduate of Christendom College from the earlier days, a double graduate as well from the graduate program there as well, and a newly elected member of the Warren County School Board in Virginia. Tom, so thrilled to have you. Welcome to the Anchor Podcast.

Tom McFadden (00:31.084)
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jeremy Tate (00:33.498)
So we've known each other for quite some time. Christendom was the eighth college to adopt the CLT back in 2016. We knew each other even before that as I was a college counselor at Mountain of Sales Academy. Tom, you were one of the earlier graduates from Christendom College. How did you discover Christendom as a high school student? I mean, at that time, there couldn't have been 100 students on campus.

Tom McFadden (00:50.38)
Yeah, I actually... Go ahead.

Tom McFadden (00:58.316)
So my father was friends with Dr. Warren Carroll, who was our founder, and he had lived in McLean, Virginia, outside of D .C. And he was kind of involved with a lot of the early founding families that got involved in the college. And then ironically, my family actually moved to Ireland in 1979. So the college got founded in 77. My father, when I was 10 years old, said we're going to move to Ireland so he can be so he could raise us in a better Catholic country.

So we had five kids at the time, had a great government job working for the Navy department, great house in McLean, said, you know, we're just going to bag it all and going to move to a different country. And so I grew up in Ireland from the time I was from 10 years old until I was 21. And so all going up in Ireland, the school system was very different in Ireland. And so my dad had always said, well, you know what, I'm familiar with this college called Christendom College and I know Dr. Carroll and all of you kids are going to go to Christendom for at least two years, maybe.

Maybe you can graduate, maybe you'll want to move into sciences or something else, but at least you're gonna go there for two years. So all growing up, we said, well, we're going to Christendom College, even though we're in a different country. When we came to Christendom, my brother came two years before me. He came in 84, I came in 1986. We were sort of the first international students the college had, even though we were Americans, but we did have the Irish accents, which was very nice. And then...

So I came here in 86 and loved it for four years. We started off when I came as a freshman, had 125 students. By the time I graduated, there were 175, so we were booming. But most of my best friends are all people that came to Christendom in the early years. In those days, admissions offices, it was a lot more difficult to find students. There was no internet, of course. People didn't visit schools. There wasn't web pages to glitz and glamour. There was no Newman Guide to choosing Catholic colleges. In those early days, people said,

We got to send your kids to a good Catholic college. You're going to be Christendom, Franciscan University, or Thomas Aquinas College. Those are sort of the big three in those early years. And since then, there's been more to join it. But I came here in 86 to 90. And again, all six of my, all five of my siblings have all been here. Some came for two years. Only two of us came.

Jeremy Tate (03:07.354)
I gotta ask and Tom, I've known you for eight years. I did not know you were in Ireland from the time you were 10 until you were 21. And I love your dad's heart, but I would imagine during that time as well, Ireland was going through a rapid kind of decline and kind of the fervency of the Catholic faith there. What was that time like for you?

Tom McFadden (03:26.508)
Well, so my dad worked for the government here. And when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, he said, I can't work for a country that would hire Jimmy Carter as its president. And so he bailed. So he looked, he found out that he could be an Irish citizen. And we didn't know anyone in Ireland, but we moved there. So it was not what my dad expected. It was not a great Catholic cultural experiment that he thought it was going to be. The faith is horrible. I went to Christian Brothers schools in Ireland and they were all heretics.

Jeremy Tate (03:34.198)
Hahaha!

Jeremy Tate (03:52.6)
Hmm.

Tom McFadden (03:53.9)
In fact, I always told people, I said, when people my age are running the country, it's going to go down the tubes because they're not learning anything. In fact, what they are learning is actually heretical. And so that's actually what's happening now. But during those times that we were there in the 80s and 90s, it wasn't as bad as it is today. It was actually still culturally Catholic, where it's not so much anymore. But after all those years, for seven years, I did learn Gaelic every day in school. I still have a couple of prayers I can say in Gaelic, but other than that, I know nothing.

Jeremy Tate (04:20.346)
Now, Tom, it's an exciting time right now at Christendom College. After a wonderful long tenure, you announced a new president yesterday. Tell us about this.

Tom McFadden (04:35.372)
Yeah, so Dr. Timothy O'Donnell has been our president for 32 years and he's like a father to us. And so last year in May, he announced that he was going to retire at the end of this academic year. And so for about the past year, the Board of Directors, who has the responsibility to find a new president for us, put out a search, interviewed a lot of people, came down with a couple of candidates at the end, brought them through the ringer, brought them to Christendom, interviewed faculty, staff, the whole thing. And now the end result was we have an awesome man named Dr. George Haarn.

He is going to be the president of Christendom beginning, I think officially July 1st, he may be coming to campus in June to sort of shadow Dr. O'Donnell for a while, but as of July 1st, 2024, he'll be the new president, the fourth president of Christendom. And everyone here is very, very happy. There's no reservations. Everyone's like, no, this is, he is the man to follow Dr. O'Donnell. He's gonna be little different in his personality and in inspirational aspects and what he's doing, but he believes in the mission of Christendom College and he's gonna be able to carry us through.

and go forward. And we're all, all of those vice presidents, all the cabinet members, we're all very, very excited about him coming to Christenham.

Jeremy Tate (05:39.418)
Now, and I know Dr. Hahn is a friend and an academic heavyweight, a Princeton PhD. It's very exciting with him coming. I know a deep, deep love as well for Christendom College. So we are all at CLT excited for this next chapter in the Christendom story.

Tom McFadden (05:57.836)
Yeah, it should be very good. He's had some great experiences. He's a convert to the faith as you are, Jeremy, right? And so that's a good addition to what we're doing here. He has a beautiful wife and five children, and they'll be coming to the area too. And so we're just very excited to have him with us. And we're all just, it was the process of going through finding a new replacement for a 32 -year president was very difficult. But we are also so very happy to have George with us, and can't wait to welcome him to camp.

Jeremy Tate (06:25.242)
Now, speaking of converts, Warren Carroll, a convert as well, a bit later in life even, the founder of Christendom College. You know, Tom, I speak about Christendom when I think about colleges that have really avoided any kind of mission drift, right? I mean, Christendom now, you're 50, almost 50 years old, and it seems to me laser focused on mission, the same mission that Dr. Carroll

started off with, the Christian was carrying that out. There was this beautiful moment. I got to be there. I don't know how I got an invitation. Something must have gone, arrived, but I got to be there for the beautiful consecration of this new chapel. It looks like a cathedral. It's unbelievable. I saw that as just a great milestone in the Christian story.

Tom McFadden (07:14.252)
It is. I mean, Christendom, like a lot of colleges, could go adrift. You know, maybe it's based on money. Maybe it's based on trying to for better students and changing who you are and what you're about. That is something that is, it scares us. In fact, that's what was the biggest part about finding a new president was finding someone who actually believed in what Christendom is, understood it, could speak about it, would want to follow it. Because there are other colleges out there that aren't Christendom. And, you know, that's fine that that's what they do. But we need to make sure Christendom stays on track. So yes.

He was a convert to the faith, came into the church in 1968 when everyone else was leaving the faith, when once Humanae Vitae came out. Dr. Carroll came into the faith and wanted to found a college that was going to help save the world. I mean, that's kind of a quick summary, but he wanted people to be well -educated in the faith so they could be educated in a broad range of ideas of history, theology, philosophy, literature, things like that, to go out of the world to explain the reason for the hope that's within us, to be able to tell people this is what the truth is, this is how the truth affects life, this is what we're called to do.

And so they're restoring all things in Christ as our mission, but the specific mission is to go out into the work world as lay people and affect the world as lay people who are knowledgeable about the faith, which is unfortunately something you don't find too often. So over the years, we've gone very slowly. We've never had any major big donors. You know, Ave Maria University had Tom Monahan. We'd like to have a Tom Monahan. We don't have one. We have a lot of smaller donors who love what we do and give us money. We don't have a lot of alumni to give us money. We rely on a lot of just...

Jeremy Tate (08:32.954)
I hope you enjoyed!

Tom McFadden (08:41.004)
Non -alumni donors, probably about 80 % of our donors, have probably never even been to our campus. They hear about us, they learn about us, they read about us, they watch us online, and they just say, well, Christendom is a good hope for the future. So that chapel that you were talking about, it's funny, our bishop was here, and the bishop, he could call it a cathedral if he wants to. That's his prerogative. We can't do that. But he called it a cathedral, and it comes from the donors, not one dime of student money paid for that.

Jeremy Tate (09:00.632)
That's the one.

Jeremy Tate (09:09.05)
Hello.

Tom McFadden (09:09.452)
that building or any of our buildings. All of our buildings, the money comes from donors. And again, many of them are just sort of the so -called little people, saw the earth, they're not that wealthy, but they have some money to donate to the college. And they just see it as saying, this is the future of Catholic higher education. The students, myself included, I see the students and say, the whole world generally seems to be going downhill. These students are going to be the future of the church. And this is how it will be. Yeah.

Jeremy Tate (09:35.546)
Oh, they're incredible. Yeah. Yeah, they're absolutely incredible. And we are lucky here. We've got our first Christendom full -time student here, Isabel Cleary. She's been fantastic addition to the CLT team. So we're proud to now be employing your graduates and we hope to employ more in the future. Tom, I want to make kind of an abrupt shift here. There's so many things I want to pick your brain about today, but look.

As a dad of 11, you homeschooled yourself. Now you find yourself serving on the Warren County School Board. No offense, but you don't fit the profile of most members of most school boards. How did this happen?

Tom McFadden (10:17.644)
So, I was, for the past two years, I've been on the Warren County Republican Committee. And so, it's our local Republican Committee. And it's pretty active, but I became the secretary of the committee, so I was in a leadership role. And my father was actually on the chairman of the search committee to find candidates to run for local government, everything from board of supervisors to constitutional officers, sheriff, board of the school board. And so, he was...

checking out people, interviewing them, emailing them, and he couldn't find anyone to run for the school board position where I currently, the Shenandoah district, which is the district I'm a member of. And I was giving all these names to all these people I know, trying to, hopefully they would say yes. And then finally I said, okay, dad, you know what? I can do this. I can run for school board because I've been in education for over 30 years. I'm a general school board member, are in meetings all the time. I said, I'm an executive at the college, I'm in meetings all the time.

Although I don't know that much about the public school system, I understand spending and budgetary issues and disciplinary things. I understand all the things they do. Yes, it's a different world, but I'll do it. So I basically put my hand up and said, I'll run for it. I got the nomination of the local, I got the endorsement from the local Warren County Republicans. I was the only person on the ballot. So if I had lost, it would have been very problematic. There was a writing candidate the very last two months into it, the writing candidate that,

that thought I was a little too radical, thought I was going to try to do crazy things in her mind. And so she did write a writing campaign against me. But the end result, I think I won, you know, 62 to 38 margin. And I came into it. And now, interestingly, there's five people on the Warren County School Board, two of us that we both just won. Two of us are homeschooling parents, which, again, the newspapers, the local people seem to say, what's wrong with these people? They don't have any skin in the game. They don't have any.

kids there, how can they even have anything to do with it? But two of us out of the five are conservative minded homeschooling parents, which is very neat because we now have Melanie Salins is her name. She and I have a good relationship and then we have a lot of background. And I mean, she has two children, she homeschools. I, of course, have 11 kids. My wife does the homeschooling, but I help fund it and I back it, of course, 100 percent. So I've been on that since January 1st and.

Tom McFadden (12:36.396)
There's been a lot of different meetings. There's a lot of skepticism about me coming on the school board. I actually voted against the budget the other day. I was the only person to vote against the budget and people think I'm kind of a radical voting against it, but it was just too much and they didn't think about another thing. So I just said, well, I'm not going to vote for it. It passed anyway because the other people voted for it, but I did my part. I've added to meetings. I've made decisions with the school chair. I've been able to kind of talk to everyone on the school board.

So I think I was skeptical at first I'd be able to make an impact because a school system is like the Titanic. It's like drive the Titanic. It's 5 ,000 students, many schools, lots of employees. You'd have to turn it any direction. You need to really be, it's a very slow process, but I'm committed. I'm on it for four years. So I think I'll make an impact.

Jeremy Tate (13:27.642)
Now, Tom, what would you say, I know there are folks, folks that probably we both know and have great relationships with who would actually say, you know, abandon the public school system, you know, the traditional telos of education as the cultivation of virtue, as the formation of the whole human person has been lost. How would you respond to that kind of mentality?

Tom McFadden (13:52.78)
Well, I mean, as a homeschooling father, I've sort of given up on all schooling other than what my wife provides. So I used to be headmaster of a school. In fact, when I was headmaster of the school, I didn't send my kids to my own school. So I'm a very firm supporter of homeschooling. So that being said, the public school system, whether you like it or don't like it, there are 5000 students here in Warren County, Virginia that they like it. They want to be part of it. Maybe it's the only education they can get. Maybe they can't afford private education.

They can't afford to not work in homeschool. So it is what it is. So my goal is to say, well, these these are souls all created by God that have eternal destiny to go to heaven. If I can get in the way of crazy things happening, you know, various transgenderism things. I mean, I just I got I got an email today from some lady telling me that Fairfax County School Board, which is down close to the D .C., they just turned Easter Sunday into Transgender, you know, Acknowledgement Identity Day.

and they're taking that and they almost all voted for it. So there's a lot of crazy things that can happen at the school board level. And if you have a couple of conservative minds on there, if I can at the end of four years just say, well, nothing crazier happened during my time on the school board, then it will be a service. I mean, sure, I don't actually have any friends to the best of my knowledge. I don't have any friends that send their kids to the public schools. So this is all an act of service, an act of charity, in my opinion, to say, I want to provide the best education.

within the system that's currently there, or at least to make sure it doesn't get, you know, we don't have crazy things going on or crazy books in the library or crazy policies that happen, because those things can certainly happen. And these children, again, are created by God. They're affected. They're going to be at the shopping or working at the Walmarts that my children are going to. They're going to be around and they're going to affect and they're going to change the culture because there's way more of them than there are the homeschooling kids or the good Catholic school kids. So it's, I see it as a service. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of great families that are.

sending their children to these schools. There's a lot of high achieving students that go to these schools. A lot of special needs students that need the love and attention that these schools give. Again, I knew nothing about the public school system, but I went on a tour. I went and met with all the principals, got a tour of the place, met the teachers. These people are giving their lives to these students. And again, we may see sometimes they're a little misguided, their curriculum isn't strong enough or hard enough or good enough. There's a lot of problems, I understand that. But there's a lot of people that are working in these schools that...

Tom McFadden (16:15.936)
are given everything they have to it. And it's admirable. And our goal is to try to make it make and also the taxpayers, we're all paying money into the system and we need to make sure that there's someone representing the taxpayers too that can say, let's not spend all our money on inefficient manner, in efficient things.

Jeremy Tate (16:35.418)
Tom, I think it's awesome and so commendable. Thank you for your service there. And I think we need more folks like yourself on school boards throughout the country. So thank you. Let's pivot again and talk about this other announcement that everyone at CLT is super thrilled about. It says, Christendom just became the first college in the country to offer full tuition scholarships for the CLT10 National Award recipients. And so,

we've been doing this for five or six years, every year, and this is very similar to PSAT National Merit, where we identify our very top students, typically about 50 students per year. These are 10th grade students that are in the very, very top of the country. We're thrilled that y'all made this announcement. What was behind this at Christendom College?

Tom McFadden (17:27.084)
Well, as you know, as you mentioned, we were the eighth adopter of the CLT back in the day. I sort of wish we had been number one. That's how much we believe in it. But as you know, also, you came out to visit this semester, and we asked everyone to, hey, raise your hand if you took the CLT. And everyone seemed to have taken it. So we promote the CLT. We expect that the vast majority of our students, maybe even 80%, only take the CLT. They don't even.

They didn't even say, well, let me take the SAT on the side or the ACT. They just say, we're going CLT. And so as a result, we just know our clientele is CLT. So we have for probably since 2014 or 2015, we have been offering five full tuition scholarships to national merit scholarship finalists. And of course that's figured out through the PSAT. Well, you know, we can't even generally find five every year because we don't have that many students taking either the SAT or the PSAT.

So we're able to give out two or three every year and we're happy to do so. But we realized when we found out you had this program that was kind of similar to that, we said, well, we should do this for sure because this is our clientele, our students, the people coming to Christendom are more likely than not to want to take the CLT and then on top of that, take the CLT -10. Plus it gives them an opportunity to qualify for the full tuition scholarship. So now we have, if you do the PSAT and get a good score, we go National Merit Scholarship minus or you take the CLT -10.

come in the top 50, all of those people have an opportunity to apply for and get given one of the five full tuition scholarships you give. It's not a first come first serve, there's an application process. But again, in past years, we haven't had a run on the bank because we haven't had that many people in our constituency that have taken the PSAT. But I think it's actually going to grow. We're going have a lot more people taking the CLT -10, which they should. They should do that.

Jeremy Tate (19:18.36)
And y 'all we're trendsetters already within a day or two of this happening. I got a call from our dear friends over at the Catholic Institute of Technology, a new Catholic college launching in Castel Gandolfo in Rome, Bill Hahi. And they said, we're in too. We want to do what Christendom did. We're going to announce this as well. So thank you for starting what I hope will become a trend for colleges. But that's kind of the Christendom way, kind of being leaders.

And one of the other ways I think Christianum has kind of been a leader is developing a summer program for high school students. You know, I was there probably a couple months ago, as you mentioned, and I met with a number of students and I said, hey, why did you choose Christianum? What got you here? I think every one of them said I went to summer's best. So I don't know what you do during that week, but apparently kids go and they're like, yeah, I'm not going anywhere else. So what is this? What do kids do at summer's best?

Tom McFadden (20:13.42)
So we have, it's called the best week ever. It sounds a little bit cheesy at times, cause like, can it really be the best week ever? But we used to call it the experience Christmas summer program. And when the students at the end of the week, they'd write us these thank you notes and little testimonies and they all said it was the best week ever. So we said, let's just call it the best week ever. So we actually have the best week ever .com. So we own that. So we have five one week sessions. We could just do one big session and bring all the students in at one time, but that would not be our brand. Our brand is personalism, knowing people one -on -one.

That's actually what enables students to come to Christenham. So we have five one -week sessions with about 65 kids in each session, half guys, half girls. They come for a week, they come in on a Sunday night, they leave Saturday morning. And during the week, they spend time in classes, they go canoeing, they go hiking, they do fun stuff, they do some dancing, we do sports events, play dodgeball. I even play dodgeball, they get to throw things at me, it's great. And so we have all these talent show, we have all kinds of holy hours. We sort of, it's the highlight reel of a Christenham education.

four years jammed into one week. And so it's a very sort of emotional roller coaster. Students aren't sure if they're going to like it or if anyone's going to like them or they're going to fit in, they're going to find their people. But it's after junior year. So they all come, they come in for that week. And at the end of the week, we have a bonfire, rosary procession. And then we let them stay up a little later than normal. And they all kind of give little testimonies. And I mean, everyone starts crying. And that's just the guys, you know, the girls, everyone's weeping like, oh my gosh, this is the best week of my life. And I met better friends in this one week than all the rest of my life. And oh my gosh.

Jeremy Tate (21:32.12)
Good.

Tom McFadden (21:39.724)
So it's kind of like an emotional roller coaster where we hope that they end the summer program on a high note. And then we say, well, come on back to Christendom. If you come back to Christendom, we'll give you a scholarship, a summer program scholarship to come here, come back and visit. And so 75 % of our freshmen, 75 % of the freshmen attended one of our summer programs. And so five one -week programs, we have 325 people in. It's the biggest summer program of its kind of all the different schools that have these things.

And it's very successful. And the main reason it's successful is we break it into the smaller groups and we can know them one -on -one. I have lunch with them every day. We give talks to them. Mr. Phillips, our admissions director, knows them all by name the Monday morning after they arrive. And this is something that they're like, wow, if you actually took the time to get to know us as a son -in kid who may or may not come to the college, that's an amazing experience. So that's where it is. And just Christian, I'm glad you're here.

Jeremy Tate (22:28.346)
When it may apply now, it's open, app's open.

Tom McFadden (22:31.532)
Well, again, by the time this thing airs, it'll probably all be full. We may have a couple of spots open for men. Right now as we speak, as here in March, we have a waiting list for girls. It's already full. We only have a couple of spots left for guys. So it fills up very quickly. In fact, we opened registration and application process in January. In most, it was full by the end of January. So it goes very quickly, costs $600, and it's a great time for the buck.

Jeremy Tate (22:55.482)
Yeah. Now, Tom, you and our mutual friend, Sam Phillips, who's the director of admissions at Christendom, I mean, you are now at full capacity. You've gone the exact opposite direction of so many Catholic colleges in the country that have just seen declining enrollment, declining enrollment, many closing their doors. And here you are setting enrollment record year after year. But now you're kind of at capacity.

So if you're a student or parent listening to this and you want a good shot of getting into Christendom College, what do you recommend?

Tom McFadden (23:32.428)
So we hit it, we're at 550 is our, it's our cap. It's been our cap forever in a day. And, and, uh, you know, I've been managing admissions since for 20 years and I never, I never knew when this day was going to come, but thankfully it's here now. And so, yes, it's going to become a little more competitive. We never want to turn into an elite school and just say, you know, we're going for the highest scores, the people, the most money we we're trying to save souls here. This is, this is our job. So we're trying to find the right people that want to do, they want to be fighters in the great culture war that exists. So that's, that's who we're looking for. So the best way.

for people to get involved and to say, I want to make sure I get my sort of spot locked in is going to the summer program. Students who come to that summer program, whether they're alumni kids, even my own kids have come to the summer program. They get on, we have a sort of a fast track, an earlier track that's an unpublished track of how we can, you know, let them know when they get back a different application date. So they have sort of a benefit of saying, well, I spent a week on campus. I lived in your dorms, had your classes, had your teachers. We say, well, you're the probably our best candidates that are interested in it.

We of course do let people who haven't come to the summer program, we have a December 1 early action deadline every year. But if you wait till you discover it April of your senior year, there's a very good chance you'll end up on the waiting list because we've had a waiting list the past three years. And yeah, the enrollment we've grown by 42 % since 2012. It's gone up and up and up and up and up. And it is a testament to the fact that we are sticking to our guns. The days of COVID actually helped us a little bit too because during the COVID times, a lot of colleges were...

doing a lot of weird things. We actually were very, very normal, so -called normal during that time. And people were like, wow, if Christina reacts to this crazy COVID thing in such a normal way, we want to be there. We want to go there. So that actually boosted our numbers, believe it or not. We...

Jeremy Tate (25:12.28)
And normal is in short supply, right? And it's just, it's...

Tom McFadden (25:15.916)
Right, normal, doing what just, I mean, being able to just, you know, not get frantic about all the things going on in the world. So they like our education, they like what we're doing, they like that we stick to it. We're not any new crazy majors, we're doing the seven great liberal arts, and we're sticking to it, and we're proud of who we are, and we're not trying to say, but let's be like them, let's be like the next Notre Dame. We don't want to be like the next Notre Dame. In fact, that's one of our goals is not to be the next Notre Dame. We want to be the best that Christenham can be, and I think in our world,

Pope John Paul II said about us, Christenham College is doing a great work for the church. And it's great to have that accolade that we like to promote out there.

Jeremy Tate (25:50.106)
Well, well, Tom, final question for you. We always end the Anchor podcast talking about books. Is there one book for you personally, professionally that has been most formative? Maybe a book you come back and reread every year or two.

Tom McFadden (26:03.34)
It's funny, we, there's a lot of different, I think, sort of spiritual books, the thing that's for me that's the most important, I've been in management for 35 years, and so I'm not looking at a lot of business books, because I'm not a faculty member, I'm looking at a lot of educational books. The thing I need to myself improve is my spirituality. And so obviously the better you are in that realm, it works out better for everybody else. So I would say St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, is actually my, it's sort of my go -to.

Manual of how to how to get to heaven how to do things, right? You know, I'm in the reprocess again during this lent reading that over again or the very first time I read I want to I'm going back after I finished I said, oh my gosh I need to go back and like write the Cliff notes version so so I can remember what I was supposed to do how I can get to heaven how I can be a better person so I think that in my job of working for a Catholic Apostolate Seeing what's out there being the best spiritual person I can be I I love going being able to get paid basically to go to daily Mass here at Christendom College and

So to work on my spiritual life is probably the most important. That's going to help me better professionally, emotionally, spiritually, and to be a better father and husband as well.

Jeremy Tate (27:11.354)
Tom McFadden, it's a wonderful note to end on. Thank you. Thank you all for being just great friends and advocates for CLT over the years. And thank you for refusing to ever compromise your mission because it is the most important one. So we love y 'all at Christendom. Congrats, President Hart, if you're listening to this on the new appointment as well. And we hope CLT students keep coming to Christendom in droves.

Tom McFadden (27:37.548)
Very good. Thank you so much, Jeremy. And thank you for you are one of today's Dr. Carol always said people are history makers. Each person, one man can make a difference. You, Jeremy, with the CLT, you're a history maker. You're making a difference. You're changing the outlook for so many people. And it's you're really a hero to many people. Thank you.

Jeremy Tate (27:53.914)
Thank you, Tom.