With a gentle campus presence, Penny Arnn does it all
Liz Essley
Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Your News
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Arnn says when he brought up the subject, his wife responded, "Please don't make me do that."
Penny Arnn is no stranger to the spotlight. But her eyes still glint with surprise and a touch of nervousness when she finds a Collegian photographer at her door. She is nevertheless quick to welcome, and moves to hang up a wreath on the front door, an intertwined circle of broad, green leaves. On the back of the wreath she has attached a note. It reads:
"Please don't take this - I've lost two already and they look better here than anywherelse on campus. Thanks, Penny Arnn."
She is then prompt to offer her visitor coffee and tea. This visitor has been here before and knows Penny Arnn will seem uncomfortable if tea is not accepted.
She talks of the weather, the house, her dogs, in soft words, marked by a British accent. Her pearl earrings, kind eyes and short chin-length hair give a gentle, but formal, impression. She admits she is uncomfortable as the subject of photographs.
"She's shy... a little bit," President Larry Arnn says.
Junior Henry Arnn, the second oldest child of the family, says his mother naturally backs away from the spotlight, but that she's had to adapt over the years to support her husband, starting when Arnn was president of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.
"She's a quiet person, more comfortable with a small group of people you get to know really well," he says. "She doesn't go out of her way to make a big appearance."
The college volunteer
Penny Arnn's task today involves preparing the house for the dinner and class that it will hold later in the week - a week that is no exception. She regularly hosts events at Broadlawn for the college.
"I'll have to tidy up those leaves," she says, eyeing a house plant.
She also travels with her husband for board of trustees meetings and other occasions.
Though Arnn sings in the choir and helps with events at her church, Holy Trinity Parish, and previously served on the Hillsdale Community Foundation board, she says she tries not to make too many outside commitments.
"Because I try to be as helpful as I can to Larry, that means I have to be as flexible as possible," she says.
Larry Arnn says he wouldn't be able to do anything without his wife.
"I get the impression that they pretty much talk about everything," Henry says.
Though Penny Arnn's list of responsibilities varies, her commitment to her husband and the college does not.
"I think she has a sense of duty to her family and the college that is beautiful in the Aristotelian sense," Stephani Francl '07, research assistant to the president, says.
Roger DeForest, who worked for the construction company that built the addition to Broadlawn two summers ago, said Arnn took it upon herself to learn much about construction so that she could make quick decisions when asked by the workers for her preferences.
"She's very aware of everything going around her. You can't pull the wool over her eyes," he says.
She displayed so much knowledge of the project that DeForest once stopped to ask the president if his wife had any training or a degree in architecture.
Motherhood
The college volunteer tries not to travel for the college more than necessary.
"Obviously I'm trying to be a mom as well here," she says.
The mother of four children, Arnn has watched the three oldest leave the house, though Henry and Alice, a sophomore, now attend the college. Tony, adopted by the Arnns in 2006, is a high school student at the Academy. She says she hasn't minded the transition of children leaving, especially since Henry and Alice stop by Broadlawn once or twice a week.
"It's just another stage, and every stage has been different," she says.
But her husband says that isn't true.
"She lives for her children," he says.
The soft British accent
Perhaps the most surprising thing a visitor notices about Penny Arnn is that her words betray her foreign origin.
Born in the village of Broughton in Lancashire, United Kingdom, Arnn attended boarding school from the age of 10, as her parents had done before her. Though she earned high enough grades to attend university, she didn't know what she wanted to study. Instead she took a secretarial course at Oxford University, where she worked for four years before working for historian Martin Gilbert.
While working for Gilbert, she met Larry Arnn, a graduate student at the time.
"We courted over a photocopy machine," the now-president says.
Penny and Larry worked on Winston Churchill research for Gilbert. Trips to the Bodleian library and lunch afterwards formed the beginnings of their relationship.
Larry convinced Penny to marry him and move to Southern California.
"I told her I was going to make her happy," Larry said.
Penny remembers her first weeks on this side of the Atlantic, spending hours at the grocery store looking at products she'd never seen before.
She also thought stores with "no strollers" signs did not allow casual shoppers.
"So there were many shops I never went into. Then I got over that one," she says.
The Arnns moved to Hillsdale nine years ago. Being the British wife of a president of a college so concerned with the American experiment has never been odd, she says. She has had to play catch up on her American history over the years, however, picking facts up from her husband and other acquaintances.
"I grew up with the kings and queens of England, a different type of history," she says.
Besides her work at the college, Penny describes herself as domestic. She cooks, sews and gardens. She tends orchids around the house and stores plants in the college greenhouse in the winter.
And she cares for two dogs and two cats. And also, according to Henry and Francl, everyone around her.
"Everyone I've ever talked to has said she's just one of the nicest people they've ever met," Henry says.
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