February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Patrick Ford, chairman of the department, and Philip C. Haughey, head of the Friends of Harvard Celtic Studies, made the announcement recently, citing “the enormous contribution Larry Reynolds has made to Irish culture in Boston over the past fifty years.”
Reynolds and his wife, Phyllis, will be honored at a formal dinner at Harvard, according to Haughey. Past honorees have included the poet Seamus Heaney, former political chieftain and president of the University of Massachusetts William M. Bulger, Kingsley Aikins, head of the American Ireland Fund; Orla O’Hanrahan, former Irish consul in Boston, and Gerry McKenna, president of the University of Ulster.
Reynolds emigrated from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, in 1953 and quickly became one of Boston’s most active musicians. He played on Dudley Street with the Tara Ceili Band and later formed the Connacht Ceili Band. In 1975, Reynolds helped form the Boston chapter of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, which today is the largest North American chapter. Along with his sons Larry, Michael and Sean, Reynolds is a ubiquitous presence in the Irish community, playing at hundreds of functions a year.
Harvard has a storied tradition of Irish studies dating from 1896, when Chaucer scholar Fred Norris Robinson taught the first Celtic language course. A department was formalized at Harvard in 1940, thanks to philanthropist Henry Lee Shattuck. Since then, the department has become one of the world’s leading places to study Celtic languages.
Professor Ford said Harvard is currently working to establish a lecture series in honor of John V. Kelleher, an Irish language scholar and poet from Harvard who influenced the creation of Irish studies in the United States.