Former Sen. Harry Reid was honored at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday by colleagues and friends who remembered him as a hardscrabble Democrat who rose from poverty in a dusty Nevada mining town to the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate.

Reid was honored in the Capitol Rotunda during a ceremony closed to the public under COVID-19 protocols. He died last month at 82 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

In attendance were past and present lawmakers from both parties, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"In Harry's view, the government had a moral obligation to see to it that these people had every opportunity to secure a better life for themselves and their families," Schumer, who served alongside Reid in the Senate and took over as Senate Democratic leader upon Reid's retirement, said in part.

"Harry was tough as nails. A fighter to his core. But one of the most compassionate individuals you could ever imagine," Schumer continued. "In short, he was one of the most incredible and generous individuals I've ever met."

The longest-serving Nevadan in Congress and the Senate majority leader alongside two presidents, Reid helmed the chamber during one of its more consequential legislative sessions — securing the economic recovery bill during the Great Recession and President Barack Obama's landmark health care law.

“It is fitting that we pay final tribute to Harry here in the United States Capitol,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in her own remarks on Wednesday, noting that she and Reid spent over a decade serving as leaders of their respective chambers. 

“Indeed, to see him lead and legislate was to see a master at work. With a brilliant strategic mind, command of the rules, and respect for his senators,” she continued, adding: ''Harry Reid made the world a better place. History will remember him as one of the most consequential senate majority leaders of all time.”

During a funeral service last weekend in Las Vegas, President Joe Biden called Reid a "great American," one who "looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right."

Biden, Obama and others recalled one of Reid's best-known traits — abruptly hanging up on people, even presidents, rather than close with lengthy goodbyes.

"I probably hold the record for being hung up on more than anybody," Pelosi joked Wednesday. 

The few words Reid did say were often flinty and fiery, the senator unafraid to take on presidents (he called George W. Bush a "loser"), criticize the fossil fuel industry ("coal makes us sick") or declare the war in Iraq "lost." He titled his 2008 autobiography "The Good Fight."

Influential in retirement, Reid said Biden should give his new presidency just three weeks to try to work with Republicans. If not, Biden should force changes in the Senate's filibuster rules to allow simple majority passage of elections and voting rights legislation and other priorities, Reid said.

"The time's going to come when he's going to have to move in and get rid of the filibuster," Reid told The Associated Press.

Reid was born in the desolate mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, his father a hard-rock miner who later committed suicide, his mother doing laundry at home for bordellos. (He and other kids would swim in a brothel's pool.) Searchlight was a place, he said, that "had seen its better days."

The town had no churches, his family no religion. But a picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging in the Reid home would influence his political career. 

Reid hitchhiked some 40 miles to attend high school and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he made his way through college and law school. An amateur boxer, he once leveled a punch at his future father-in-law after being denied a date with Landra Gould, who would become his wife. They were married for 62 years.

First elected to the House in 1982 and reelected in 1984, Reid then served 30 years in the Senate, including a decade as the Senate Democratic leader. 

Along the way, Reid rewrote the map of Nevada by expanding public lands, halting the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste outside of Las Vegas; and securing national monument status around artist Michael Heizer's "City" installation in the desert. He quietly ensured federal funding to research UFOs. 

A man of few words, Reid often wrote notes instead — to family, colleagues and a Nevada student advocate who had reached out on immigration law changes. He championed the Dream Act and Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to protect young immigrants in the U.S. without legal status from deportation. 

As his power rose, Reid engineered a Democratic legacy for his state with Nevada's early presidential caucus. He left behind a state party apparatus that was sometimes referred to as the "Reid Machine" for its enduring political power seeking to elect the next generation of Democratic leaders.

After suffering an exercise accident at home, and with Democrats back in the Senate minority, Reid announced he would not seek reelection in 2016. 

In his farewell address to the Senate, he acknowledged he had done things that "probably a lot of people wouldn't do." But he passed on his advice to those wondering how he made it from Searchlight to Washington.

"I didn't make it because of my good looks. I didn't make it because I am a genius. I made it because I worked hard," Reid said. "Whatever you want to try to do, make sure you work as hard as you can to try to do what you want to do."