The female Dean of the Senate

Female Dean of the Senate: Mikulski and other women Senators in the 110th Congress.Barbara Mikulski is the modern dean of women U.S. Senators. She gained that respect by climbing the ladder of Baltimore politics, spending a decade in the House, and another two decades in the Senate. Regardless of party, every one of her newly-elected female colleagues pays a visit to seek advice from a woman who has weathered the Senate for over two decades.

Mikulski is the longest-serving woman currently in the Senate, besting Senators Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein and Patty Murrary by about five years. At the end of her current term, Mikulski will surpass the longest-serving woman Senator in history, Maine's Margaret Chase Smith, who served four full terms.

Sen. Margaret Chase SmithBut in only a year and a half, Mikulski will surpass Smith as longest serving woman in the history of Congress. Smith served in the House from June of 1940, when she took her late husband's seat, until being elected to the Senate in 1948. She was defeated for a fifth term in 1972.

Smith's career intersected with members of the Maryland delegation frequently throughout her career in Congress, but probably never as peculiarly as it did when she calmed down a plane full of panicking Congressmen 8,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean

Smtih and eight other members of the House Armed Services Committee were flying home from a fact-finding mission in Berlin when the plane lost an engine. Crew members credited Smith's "poise and cheerfulness" for restoring calm to the passengers, which included former Maryland Senate President and then-fifth district Rep. Lansdale G. Sasscer.

Smith was riding around the Senate in a scooter by the end of her term. In fact, at 75, she may hold the record for oldest woman to have served in the Senate (if true, then Feinstein will break that record next year). It should be noted that her age went undisclosed throughout her time in the Senate.

In his 2004 farewell speech, Senator Fritz Hollings contrasted Mikulski and Smith, who was the sole female member of the Senate when he arrived in 1966.

"We got 16 or 17 now and you can't shut 'em up.... Get in a debate with Barbara Mikulski or Barbara Boxer and they'll take your head off."

That's a good thing, he noted.