DaytonDailyNews.com

WASHINGTON — Four months after Howard Metzenbaum's death at the age of 90, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stood in front of a roomful of Metzenbaum family, friends and staff in an ornate Senate reception room and remembered the first time he met the cranky Cleveland populist.

Reid, then a U.S. House member, was thinking of running for the Senate. He visited Metzenbaum to ask for advice on running and raising money, because everyone knew the millionaire Metzenbaum knew how to make money.

Reid launched into a soliloquy listing friends and contacts he had who would help him make enough money for a successful bid. After he finished speaking, he paused, hoping for a nugget praise from the Ohio senator.

He didn't get it.

"That's all (expletive)," Metzenbaum responded, telling Reid that he had only himself to rely on if he wanted to build a successful Senate candidacy.

Listening to the tributes and eulogies foisted upon Metzenbaum last week at a memorial service in Washington, D.C., and one couldn't help but think maybe it's best to be a bit of a curmudgeon.

Metzenbaum, even his family admitted, could come off as a bit cranky, and certainly unwilling to back down from a fight. He wasn't always pleasant, even his friends said, but with his encyclopedic knowledge of Senate rules and his bulldog tenacity, he knew how to effect change.

There was Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a frequent foe on the floor of the Senate who grew to like, and more importantly respect, his ideological foe after the debates were finished. He described a political antagonist who was "fearless when it came to championing what he believed in."

"I could never really get mad at somebody who really believed all that crap," he said, to uproarious laughter.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, described the time he called himself a progressive Democrat and Metzenbaum got his dander up. "Harkin, you're a liberal. Be proud of it," he chided.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., fondly remembered watching Metzenbaum argue stubbornly on the floor of the U.S. Senate, then go just outside the chamber and fight Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., over where to go for supper.

And former Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, remembered how the two former political foes finally bonded over a nasty editorial in a Washington, D.C. newspaper calling Metzenbaum a communist. When Glenn rushed to his defense on the Senate floor, a formerly chilly relationship began to thaw. The two eventually became close friends.

Make no mistake, Metzenbaum was a softie despite his gruff exterior. He kept a lollipop tree in his office for visiting children, and staff remembered how he'd brighten at the mention of his wife, Shirley.

But it's his gruffness, his pugnaciousness, that he's remembered for, and maybe that's for the best.

He was, at heart, a fighter.

Metzenbaum is gone. But, as his friends made abundantly clear, he left an unforgettable mark.