Maryland Senate President Emeritus Mike Miller (D-Prince George’s and Calvert counties) resigned from his post Wednesday after long-standing health issues made him “too weak to meet the demands of another legislative session,” he wrote in a letter to current Senate President Bill Ferguson.

The senator’s resignation comes just weeks before the 2021 legislative session, which legislators will largely work remotely due to the pandemic. Miller, 77, resigned as the longest serving Senate President in the country in December 2019 after he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer.

Miller was elected to the House of Delegates in 1970 and then to the Senate four years later. He served more than three decades as Senate President.

“It was the greatest honor of my life in large part because I have seen the Senate rise above partisan and other differences time and time again,” Miller wrote in his letter.

As Senate President, the moderate Catholic yielded to the changing views of the chamber, as members moved ever leftward. During his tenure, Miller helped pass casino gambling, same-sex marriage, a more progressive tax structure, and abortion rights.

Gov. Larry Hogan wrote in an email that he’s known Miller since he was a kid and it’s been a privilege to work alongside him.

“[Miller] will go down in our state’s history as a lion of the Senate,” Hogan wrote.

Ferguson told DCist he’s relied regularly on Miller’s experience and guidance.

“I observed how Mike as Senate President had a unique ability to bring people together to solve problems, despite the controversy or intensity of difference,” Ferguson wrote in an email. “His example of leadership and statesmanship has and will continue to serve as a model for public servants in Maryland for years to come.”

A self-proclaimed history buff, Miller quoted President George Washington’s final address at Maryland’s historic state house to the Continental Congress in 1783, stating, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of Action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this August body, under whose orders I have so long acted.”

The Senate’s central committee is responsible for appointing a delegate to fill his seat.

This story was updated with reactions from Gov. Larry Hogan and Senate President Bill Ferguson.