Washington - U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd delivered the final speech of his 30-year Senate career Tuesday, telling colleagues and family who gathered for the occasion that he would not only miss the personalities and friends he leaves behind after a lifetime in the capital.

"Most assuredly, I will miss the people of the Senate," Dodd said in remarks prepared for delivery. "But I will miss the work, as well."

Dodd briefly hit the high points of a life spent in the Congress, from watching his father, former Sen. Thomas Dodd, from a perch in the gallery; to serving as a Senate page in 1962, with then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson presiding over the chamber; to his election to the body in his own right, in 1980, after three terms in the House.

Dodd leaves as the longest-serving senator from Connecticut in the institution's history.

He spoke of legislative achievements, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, and treasured Connecticut constituencies, including the workers of Sikorsky, Pratt & Whitney and Electric Boat. He also thanked his family, especially his wife, Jackie, and daughters Grace and Christina.

Ever mindful of his father's legacy, Dodd noted that he had served his three decades in the Senate at the same desk his father used for 12 years.

But Dodd also said he would resist rattling off "the video highlights of my Senate service" and instead turned his attention to the current workings of a beloved institution, one he said "is not functioning as it can and should."

That included a lament about the increasingly partisan nature of its daily workings, especially what Dodd and other Democrats feel is relentless obstructionism by Republicans. But he also warned against rash changes to the Senate rules, as favored by some relative newcomers on his own Democratic side, who have grown frustrated about the use of filibusters and other parliamentary tactics to obstruct the passage of laws.

"I have heard some people suggest that the Senate as we know it simply can't function in such a highly charged political environment, that we should change Senate rules to make it more efficient, more responsive to the public mood, more like the House of Representatives, where the majority can essentially bend the minority to its will," Dodd said, in prepared remarks.

"I appreciate the frustration many have with the slow pace of the legislative progress," he continued. "And I certainly share some of my colleagues' anger with the repetitive use and abuse of the filibuster. Thus, I can understand the temptation to change the rules that make the Senate so unique — and, simultaneously, so frustrating.

"But whether such a temptation is motivated by a noble desire to speed up the legislative process, or by pure political expedience, I believe such changes would be unwise."

Dodd's tenure in the Senate comes to an end almost one year after the embattled senator announced, on a snowy, frigid morning outside his house in East Haddam, that he would not seek reelection to a sixth term.

Late last year, with a Republican wave beginning to build, Dodd was in dire political straits - at least according to opinion polls - after months of controversy.

The slide in polls began almost conventionally: Dodd ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, dropping out after the first contests in Iowa. Like his colleague, Sen. Joe Lieberman, before him, Dodd saw his approval ratings fall amid months spent away from Connecticut.

(Unlike some other Democratic presidential candidates, however, Dodd remained in the forefront of the Senate agenda even as he campaigned in Iowa. At one point, shortly before the crucial Iowa caucuses, Dodd returned to Washington in an unsuccessful attempt to filibuster a bill that granted immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the Bush administration spy on domestic communications without court approval.)

The end of the presidential campaign was followed by the revelation that Dodd was among a large group of public officials who were included in a "VIP" program for customers of the mortgage giant Countrywide - a company with significant interest in the activities of the Senate Banking Committee, which Dodd chaired.

Dodd insisted he had not knowingly received any improper benefits from the company, and produced a review that showed two mortgage modifications Dodd and his wife received on houses in East Haddam and Washington, D.C., were in line with those available to the general public at the time.

But negative attention lingered, and was compounded in the succeeding months, when Dodd's staff on the banking committee helped insert language into a stimulus package that allowed executives at AIG, the insurer that had been bailed out by the federal government, to retain year-end bonuses.

That provision was red meat for the growing ranks of populist critics of the Obama administration and Democrats, especially the Tea Party movement, though again, Dodd's staff privately grumbled that their boss was being thrown under the bus -- the bonus language, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner later confirmed in televised interviews, came in part from his staff.

Dodd withdrew from the Senate race, making way for Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who overcame early campaign missteps and will keep the seat in Democratic hands. Lieberman, a registered Democrat who won reelection without the party's nomination in 2006, caucuses with Senate Democrats, but has been coy about his election plans for 2012.

There were allusions to the dark penultimate summer of Dodd's career. Thanking his wife, Dodd said, "You have been my anchor to windward in the rough and turbulent waters of public service. When it was the darkest – you were the brightest."

But he was far more focused, it seemed, on urging colleagues, especially new arrivals, to embrace the cooperation -- and hard-fought but earnest debate -- that he believes the Senate needs to work.

"A legislative body that operates on unanimous consent, as does the Senate, cannot function unless the members trust each other," Dodd said. "There is no hope of building that trust unless there is the will to treat each other with respect and civility, and to invest the time it requires to create that trust and strengthen those personal bonds.

"No matter how obnoxious you find a colleague's rhetoric or how odious you find their beliefs, you will need them. And despite what some may insist, you do no injustice to your ideological principles when you seek out common ground. You do no injustice to your political beliefs when you take the time to get to know those who don't share them."

The senator concluded his remarks with a quote from St. Paul: he had "kept the faith," he said.