Retiring Partners HealthCare chairman Jack Connors feted by friends and colleagues

After 20 years on the boards of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, Partners HealthCare chairman Jack Connors is retiring. But before the Hill Holliday founder could walk away, a few hundred of his friends, colleagues, and assorted boldfacers in the Boston business community gathered Wednesday at Camp Harbor View to pay tribute to Connors’s decades of service. (We’d like to say we were there, but the private party at the summer camp Connors founded was strictly invite only.) President Obama sent along his best wishes via a video message: “Knowing you as I do, I know you’ll be as busy as ever.” The president said that Connors and wife Eileen can “reflect on all the people whose lives you’ve touched.” As you might expect, the guest list included a ton of medical professionals and politicians including: Partners chief executive Gary Gottlieb ; Dr. Atul Gawande ; W. Gerald Austen , a founder of Partners and the Mass General Physicians Organization; Governor Deval Patrick; Mayor Tom Menino and wife Angela; Partners in Health executive director Ophelia Dahl ; Massachusetts General Hospital president Peter Slavin ; Suffolk Construction’s John Fish; Vicki Kennedy; Senate President Therese Murray; Brigham and Women’s president Betsy Nabel; retired Ropes & Gray partner Ed Lawrence, who is succeeding Connors as Partners chairman; former interim US Senator Paul Kirk; former secretary of housing and economic development Ranch Kimball; Cambridge Bancorp’s Linda Whitlock; longtime Democratic strategist John Sasso; Hill Holliday CEO Mike Sheehan; Massachusetts Convention Center Authority’s Jim Rooney; Boston Health Care for the Homeless president Jim O’Connell ; and former Partners CEO Samuel Thier.