Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she won't seek reelection next year, capping a historic career that saw her rise to become one of the most consequential political leaders in modern American history.

And yes, she had plenty of Rhode Island connections.

In 2022, when Pelosi stepped aside as the Democratic leader in the House, I asked current and former members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation to share stories about their memories of her. 

I’m re-upping those stories today, along with a few new ones from US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and US Representative Gabe Amo.

Patrick Kennedy (D)
Kennedy represented the 1st District from 1995 until 2011, which means he was in the House when Pelosi became the first female speaker in 2007. He said Pelosi was fiercely loyal to her colleagues, and that’s why they’ve always had her back when she needed them for a vote.

Kennedy said he was in rehab when the Affordable Care Act was coming up for a vote. Pelosi needed his vote so much that she hopped on the phone with his doctor and asked if she could bring him to the Capitol for four hours. The doctor signed off, and Pelosi sent a car for Kennedy. After the vote, she hugged him and said, “OK, honey, now you can go back to treatment.”

James Langevin (D)
The former congressman got to watch each of Pelosi’s stints as speaker, and they built a strong relationship over the years. He said one of his favorite memories was the time Pelosi handed him the gavel to be speaker pro tempore in 2010 after making the rostrum wheelchair-accessible.

”That was a powerful moment, and it was certainly personally meaningful and moving to me, but it was also a change moment for the country,” he said. “It broadcasted that all things are possible and anyone can be speaker.”

US Senator Jack Reed (D)
He has moved to the upper chamber, but once upon a time, Senator Reed was a young pup representing Rhode Island’s 2nd District in the House of Representatives. Reed had a special “in” with Pelosi because he is friends with Bernie Buonanno, whose wife, Martha Dodd Buonanno, was roomies with Pelosi in college. Their daughter, Helena Buonanno Foulkes, is running for governor of Rhode Island.

But Reed’s favorite story about Pelosi is more recent. He was in the room in 2019 when Pelosi and other Democrats famously walked out on President Donald Trump during a tense discussion about Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria. Reed remembers Trump calling her “Nancy” instead of addressing her as the speaker, and then rambling about former president Barack Obama.

”Nancy impressed me that day with the courage to stand up and basically call the president out as being unprepared and being uncivil,” Reed said.

David Cicilline (D)
Like Reed before Cicilline also leaned on his friendship with Bernie Buonanno so that he could try to land a spot on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.

Cicilline, who represented the 1st District from 2011 until 2023, said that two of his favorite memories of Pelosi are from when she traveled to Providence so he could honor her as “Woman of the Year" and when he traveled with her and former president Obama to Cuba.

He recalls her being a workaholic. He said they were up by 7 a.m. for meetings and would get back to the hotel at 9:30 p.m. when she’d ask them to have a working dinner with a bunch of economists. After dinner, she would try to figure out where in the US she could make fund-raising phone calls.

Ronald Machtley (R)
Machtley got elected to Congress the year after Pelosi, and she wasn’t yet a member of Democratic leadership by the time he left. But he used to play basketball with Democrats Chuck Schumer and Tom Downey, and “you could see that she was the person that they were looking up to.”

Years later, when Machtley was president of Bryant University, he was visiting the Capitol with a group of students when they ran into Pelosi, who was now the speaker. He said she stopped and chatted with him just like the old days.

”My relationship with her was as a colleague as opposed to the arch enemy,” he said.

Claudine Schneider (R)
Schneider was already a member of the US House of Representatives when Pelosi was elected in 1987, and the two were members of different political parties.

They both were members of the Congressional Women’s Caucus, and Schneider e-mailed to say that “she was always reliable and collaborative/non-partisan in the best interest of women and all Americans … as she is today. That hasn’t changed.”

Schneider worked closely with Pelosi to stop an attempt by former senator Orrin Hatch to overturn Title IX: “I spearheaded that effort and she was my most dependable ally in securing votes to defeat his efforts,” she wrote.

US Representative Seth Magaziner (D)
Shortly after Magaziner was sworn into office in 2023, he said Pelosi hosted all of the new House Democrats for dinner in Statuary Hall in the Capitol.

Magaziner wrote: “I will always remember one line from her speech that night: ‘In the House of Representatives, sometimes you have to have the courage to fight. You have to be willing to take a punch and you have to be willing to throw a punch … for the children!’ Everyone laughed, but she was right. Politics is a tough profession, but we do well when we stay focused on building a better world than the one we inherited.”

US Representative Gabe Amo (D)
Amo won a special election in 2023, and met with Pelosi a week after he was sworn into office.

“She expressed her admiration for Rhode Island and both of my predecessors David Cicilline and Patrick Kennedy, and quickly bonded with me about Ghana, my father’s birthplace, and her work to combat global AIDS.”

Among her words of advice for Amo: “Find committee work that helps your district, focus on bringing federal money back home, and cherish the institution.”

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D)
Whitehouse has worked closely with Pelosi on fighting climate change, including traveling with her to Madrid for COP25, the annual climate conference hosted by the UN.

After the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2023, Pelosi singled out Whitehouse with praise: “I want to tip my hat to Sheldon Whitehouse,” she said. “Relentless. Persistent. Just there, whether it’s a COP meeting wherever it happens to be or just a small little press conference that we might be having, he is always there, and I thank him for his consistent leadership.” 

On social media Thursday, Whitehouse wrote, “I feel such joy to have worked with surely the greatest legislator of all time. Obamacare was just as much Pelosicare, and cap-and-trade would have saved so much hurt. The legend was earned.”