Current and former lawmakers gathered to celebrate the 90th birthday of former Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland who smashed through glass ceilings and “held the door” for the next generation, they said.

Every living former and current Maryland senator was in attendance on Wednesday, as well as House giants like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, as Charmery ice cream from Baltimore was served and attendees donned large buttons with the state flag to mark the occasion.

Pelosi recounted how their story began before their time together in Congress. They attended the same high school — albeit, some years apart — and Mikulski represented the same district in Maryland that Pelosi’s father once did. 

“She’s been a heroine to us for a long time, for all that she has stood for, and all the difference she has made,” Pelosi said.

It wasn’t Mikulski’s actual birthday, which was back in July. But “I think this is worth celebrating all year long,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md. 

Mikulski was the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate without succeeding her spouse or having been appointed first. She continued to make history in the chamber as the first woman to lead the powerful Appropriations Committee and, until the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein beat her record in 2022, as the longest-serving female senator. 

Now that record is held by Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., who attended Wednesday’s party. When Murray first ran in 1992, “Barbara was the one who was on the phone to me every week, ‘You’re going to do this. You’re going to be great,’” she recalled. 

“When I got here, she was saying, ‘Here’s how you’re going to succeed.’ I followed in her footsteps many times, but significantly on the Appropriations Committee. I saw how she ran the committee, and she has been a friend, a colleague, and truly a mentor,” Murray said.

Alsobrooks, the second woman to represent Maryland in the Senate behind Mikulski, said she “opened the door” literally and metaphorically.

“She invited me here over 10 years ago when I was a newly elected prosecutor in Maryland. That was the first time I’d been invited to the Senate dining room,” Alsobrooks said.

“When I came here to be sworn in to the Senate, she was the most excited person here that day. She walked with me to the floor of the Senate, and then said, ‘Stop right here, because I want to be the person to open the door,’” Alsobrooks added. “We stepped onto the floor together, and she said, ‘Welcome to the Senate’, and burst into tears.”

Mikulski began her career in the House in 1977 and went on to serve three decades in the Senate, retiring nearly a decade ago in 2017. Though she’s no longer serving, she still watches C-SPAN regularly, she said, including to see who’s talking on the Senate floor during votes. 

Her legacy lives on in the building with a room named in her honor, just below where the celebration took place, part of a duo that were the first to be named after women.  

“When I came to the Senate 40 years ago, [Patrick Leahy] was here, one of the first people to shake my hand,” she said to the former Vermont Democrat, who was also in attendance, adding she “couldn’t believe” she’d made it to the Senate, daughter of a grocery store owner in East Baltimore. “But here I was, and I was here to stay.”

“I loved working here in the Senate, and I’m very grateful,” she told the crowd. “We want to make the world a better place.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said, “Even though she’s not physically here, she has a strong presence here still,” and he draws inspiration from her laser-focus on issues that affect their shared home state. 

If she were still serving in the current Senate during the current administration, Mikulski said, she would be “advocating constitutional government — [and] advocating for Maryland.”