A Malden philanthropist and photographer who has traveled the world taking photos of children and families in impoverished and war-torn countries, a civil rights attorney who fought for years to legalize same-sex marriage in New England and across the nation, and a former Massachusetts state representative and a leading expert on Vietnam policy who founded Harvard’s Vietnam research program were among 20 recipients Thursday of the Presidential Citizens Medal at a ceremony at the White House.
President Biden praised the honorees as “an extraordinary group of Americans” who have dedicated their careers to serving democracy in “essential ways.”
“Together you embody, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, essential truths,” Biden said. “Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship,” Biden said at the ceremony, which was live-streamed. “That’s our work for the ages, and that’s what all of you, and I mean this, embody.”
Bobby Sager was honored “for widening the aperture of the human spirit,” Mary Bonauto was honored “for securing the right of every American to marry whom they love,” and Thomas Vallely was honored “for inspirational service and statesmanship.”
The Presidential Citizens Medal is the second-highest civilian award of the United States government and is presented to citizens “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens,” according to the White House.
The 17 other 2025 recipients ranged from Bill Bradley, a two-time NBA Champion and Hall-of-Fame New York Knick, who went on to serve three terms as a US senator from New Jersey and ran for US president; to Congress members Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and former Republican representative Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, who served as chair and vice chair, respectively, of the House January 6th Committee.
Bradley was honored “for bringing the values of the game to a life of public service,” while Thompson was honored “for his lifelong dedication to safeguarding our Constitution.”
Cheney, who received a lengthy and energetic round of applause, was honored “for putting the American people over party.”
Bonauto, who serves as senior director of civil rights and legal strategies for Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, was the key litigator in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which ended in a landmark decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2003 that found gay and lesbian couples had the legal and equal right to marry.
Bonauto also argued before the United States Supreme Court in 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic case that codified same-sex marriage nationwide.
In a statement, Bonauto called it “an astonishing honor” to be among the award recipients chosen by the White House. She said the Presidential Citizens Medal “represents something fundamental: that we each have a role to play in fulfilling our country’s promises of equality, dignity, and freedom.”
“I stand alongside so many courageous individuals who fought for the right to marry, and others across our nation who share a deep desire that all of our community members be treated with fairness and dignity,” she said. “This recognition today is a testament to the profoundly positive impact marriage equality has had on individuals, families, and communities across our country.”
Evan Wolfson, a leader in the marriage equality movement, was also a recipient of the award on Thursday.
Vallely, who served in the Massachusetts Legislature as a representative from 1980 to 1987, is a senior adviser for Vietnam at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. A Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, Vallely retired last year from Harvard University, where he was the founding director of the Vietnam Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, according to a Harvard spokesperson.
Vallely created the Vietnam Program at Harvard in 1989 and helped normalize relations between Vietnam and the United States, “establishing some of the first educational exchange programs” between the countries, according to a 2017 article on the Kennedy School’s website.
Vallely, who also served as a senior advisor for the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary series “The Vietnam War,” created the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City in 1994 and founded Fulbright University Vietnam in 2016, the country’s first independent, nonprofit university, according to his Columbia biography.
In a statement announcing the medal recipients Thursday, the White House said Vallely “brought Vietnam and the United States together— establishing Fulbright University Vietnam, fostering greater economic and cultural exchange, and overcoming the perils of the past to seize the promise of the future. His service remains a symbol of American leadership in the world.”
Sager, who grew up in Malden, made his fortune by turning a small Boston-based jewelry firm into a lucrative global financial services business. In 2000, he founded the “Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow” and set out with his wife and their two children on a yearlong tour around the world, including stops in Nepal, Bhutan, South Africa, India, China, and Brazil, to live among the local people and set up charities, the Globe reported at the time.
Nearly 25 years later, Sager has published five books from his travels and his photography has been featured in exhibitions around the world. In 2019, Sager published his fourth book, “Invisible Sun: The Power of Hope through the Eyes of Children,” which featured his photographs of children living in refugee camps, slums, and remote villages in countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He said he is now working on his sixth book, “More: A Reflection on Gratitude,” which is due to be published this year.
Among various initiatives, Sager’s foundation has helped set up micro-lending banks for small businesses in Rwanda, established teacher training in Pakistan and medical training in Afghanistan, and created a program that teaches Western science to Tibetan monks and nuns in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, according to a biography from the foundation.
Sager said the foundation’s guiding principle is “eyeball-to-eyeball philanthropy,” which he describes as “getting something done with a person’s dignity in mind.”
“You can’t just throw money at something,” he said in a phone interview Thursday before he headed to the White House.
“It’s very important that you make a difference with the recognition that human dignity, above all, is the thing that matters. Sometimes you’ve got to look somebody in the eye so they feel that.”
Sager said his wife, Elaine, and his children, Shane and Tess, would be joining him at the White House for the ceremony, almost a quarter-century after they embarked on this work as a family. His son-in-law, Patrick Hogan, and 19-month old grandson, Otis Hogan, were also attending, he said.
“It makes me very emotional, and especially the idea that my family can be there and have the president of the United States give this to me,” he said. “I’m just so filled with gratitude.”
Other recipients include a mix of private citizens and Republican and Democratic lawmakers and policy experts, many of whom served Biden during his long career in public life.
Former senators Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, and Ted Kaufman, a Delaware Democrat, are two of Biden’s longtime friends and colleagues.
Other honorees included Dr. Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.
Academic Paula Wallace and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, were also named recipients.
Other former lawmakers being honored were former US Senator Nancy Kassebaum, a Republican and the first woman to represent Kansas; and former representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.
Four people received the award posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young”; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
This story has been updated.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com. Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.