The annual Irish America Top 100 usually promotes a mix of business, entertainment and other personalities who have made their mark over the previous year.
This year, the annual dinner in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, organised by Mr Niall O'Dowd and Ms Patricia Harty, publishers of Irish American magazine, was given over completely to a moving commemoration of the Irish and Irish-American families caught up in the attacks of September 11th.
The dining tables of the grand ballroom were packed with firemen, police, ironworkers and dozens of family members of those who died when the towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed.
The President of Ireland, Mrs McAleese, told them the generations of Irish emigrants who went before "would be proud of a mod- ern generation who have known the easy times and comfort of prosperity but who, when tested, chose the hardest road of all".
Eight Irish-born died that day but "the litany of Irish names among the dead emergency rescue personnel" told its own story, Mrs McAleese said, at the end of an evening of music and video tributes during which Paddy Maloney of the Chieftains played on the tin whistle the lament he performed at Ground Zero in October last year.
"It felt in the days that followed that we were all touched personally and profoundly by the loss, so profoundly that the Government declared a National Day of Mourning and Ireland shut down everything except its solidarity and sympathy with the suffering people of the United States," Mrs McAleese said.
It was a time "for Ireland to stand with her dearest friends and she did - for America has been there for us through many difficult times and we felt privileged to offer our hearts and hands at a time of unbearable sadness. We in Ireland have been privileged in our own difficult journey towards peace with justice in Northern Ireland to have the solidarity, loyalty and support of our many friends here in the United States."
She thanked the Americans for their continuing commitment "as we continue the important work of implementing the Good Friday agreement".
At a business luncheon yesterday Mrs McAleese recalled how "we were a third world country within living memory and today we are among the wealthy nations of the world".
However, "we all know that we cannot prosper or guarantee our security by making ourselves a comfortable, complacent citadel," she told the Ireland-US Council for Commerce and Industry in the Metropolitan Club.