Lietz, former president and CEO of circuit-board maker Hadco Corp., which had plants in Salem and Derry before Sanmina Corp. bought it in 2000, accepted the BIA Lifetime Achievement Award but said it was family, co-workers, and others who should share in it.

Lietz gave an impassioned plea for more private-sector involvement in New Hampshire higher education, particularly public higher education.

He told the 700 attendees at the Center of New Hampshire Radisson that the state has world-class education institutions deserving of support. He cautioned that government should not be expected to foot the full bill and he urged business executives to help in any way they could.

Political Library director Michael Chaney accepted the award for that 10-year-old institution, noting its efforts to preserve and protect the state's first-in-the-nation Presidential Primary.

Which is where "the most important'' man in the world figured in. Secretary of State Bill Gardner had to be coaxed from his seat to accept the standing ovation given him after Gov. Lynch's introduction. Lynch and others noted that while Gardner has the job of setting the primary date, it is a statewide effort to convince the nation that New Hampshire is worthy of its traditional role.

The loudest cheers, however, may have been for guest speaker and New Hampshire native Ben Cherington. The vice president of player personnel for the Boston Red Sox presented a detailed look at how the World Championship team had assembled a group of young players who had clearly paid for their relatively meager starting salaries.

Cherington good-naturedly took questions from the audience, agreeing that it would be nice to be able to re-sign standout third baseman Mike Lowell. But, he said, Lowell had "great timing'' in putting together an outstanding year, and his free-agency status this winter will command big dollars.

Asked about the possibility of Yankees star Alex Rodriguez coming to Boston (actually, dinner-goers were asking Cherington not to sign "A-Rod''), Cherington demurred, saying that the pricetag may be too high in any case.

The annual dinner, the 94th for one of the state's largest business organizations, was chaired by Polly Brown of Verizon and emceed by Jim Roche, president of the BIA.