The Eire Society of Boston was founded in 1937 to promote Irish culture and to bring it to a wider audience particularly in the United States. Each year the Society bestows the Gold Medal Award to individuals they feel have greatly contributed to their goals. Recipients have included film-makers John Ford

John Ford

John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

 and John Huston

John Huston

John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...

, Irish actresses Siobhan McKenna

Siobhán McKenna

Siobhán McKenna was an Irish stage and screen actress.-Background:Born Siobhán Giollamhuire Nic Cionnaith in Belfast, Northern Ireland into a Catholic and nationalist family, she grew up in Galway City and in County Monaghan, Ireland speaking fluent Irish...

 and Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara is an Irish film actress and singer. The famously red-headed O'Hara has been noted for playing fiercely passionate heroines with a highly sensible attitude. She often worked with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne...

, Irish poet Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, U.S. Ambassadors to Ireland William V. Shannon

William V. Shannon

William Vincent Shannon was a member of the editorial board of the New York Times and U.S. ambassador to Ireland under President Jimmy Carter ....

 and Jean Kennedy Smith

Jean Kennedy Smith

Jean Ann Kennedy Smith is an American diplomat and a former United States Ambassador to Ireland. She is the eighth of nine children born to Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald and is their last surviving child. She is the sister of the 35th U.S. President, John F. Kennedy,...

, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John W. McCormack and President John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

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