Richard Neal was just a couple of years into his congressional career when Queen Elizabeth came to Capitol Hill to address the Houses of Congress.
Neal had no beef with the queen per se but he had a lot of it with the British government over the situation in Northern Ireland.
It was 1991 and the situation wasn't, well, very positive.
"Yes, 1991," said the Massachusetts Democrat and co-chair of the Friends of Ireland in Congress in a phone interview.
"We had thirty thousand British soldiers in the North, watch towers, an RUC police force perceived as being one sided, Diplock courts. It was a military state."
That was then and this is now.
"We can't overstate the successes we've had," said Neal who attended the speech delivered by King Charles before the House of Representatives and Senate Tuesday.
"Yes, it's still imperfect but we have a functioning legislature at Stormont, and democracy. There are key parts of the Good Friday Agreement in which the Secretary of State can call for a referendum on the status of the six counties. I don't know anybody who would call for for the restoration of a hard border other than a handful of recalcitrants.
"The next step up is economic investment and this based on the model we have developed, that being investment from honest brokers. There has been significant biotech investment in Belfast and Derry and there is now a level of comfort with this."
There is one sign of the past that Neal says still exists and that he would like to see gone.
"There's a need for a timetable for the elimination of peace walls," he said.
With regard with the roughly 35 minute address to the joint session by Charles, Neal said that he had been pleased with references to the Magna Carta, checks and balances, Ukraine and climate change.
"His reference to checks and balances brought our side to its feet," Neal said in reference to his fellow Democrats.
"I was thinking through the speech of the moment that Martin McGuinness took the queen's hand. That was a world changer."
Yesterday's address by the queen's son might not have been a world changing event, but for Richard Neal it took place in a much changed world compared to 1991, particularly that small part of it called Northern Ireland.
