Betty Reid Soskin lived nearly the whole 20th century before becoming famous in the 21st — and she spent her fame on one mission: making sure the Black women of World War II got into the story. She became a National Park Service ranger at 85, the oldest active ranger in the service’s history, and retired at 100. She died on December 21, 2025, at 104, and this page honors her the way she asked to be honored: by telling the part of the story that was left out.
During the war, Soskin worked as a file clerk at a segregated Black boilermakers’ union hall in Richmond, California. That sentence holds the reality behind the famous “Rosie the Riveter” myth: the home front ran on women like her, and the posters weren’t drawn of them, the rivets weren’t credited to them, and the nation that celebrated Rosie largely declined to see the Black women filing, building and organizing beside her. Soskin was one of them, invisible in her own war.
In 1945, she and her husband Mel Reid founded Reid’s Records in Berkeley — one of California’s first Black-owned record stores, which ran until 2019. Seventy-four years of Black music, sold by a Black family, in a store that outlived most of the industry around it.
The ranger who rewrote the park
In the early 2000s, Soskin helped plan the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond — and she insisted, from inside the planning rooms, that the park tell the stories of Black and brown home-front workers. Then she did something no planner had done: she joined the Park Service herself. At 85, Betty Reid Soskin became a ranger, and became the oldest active ranger in National Park Service history — famous for her unscripted talks, in which the exhibit stood up and spoke its own life.
In 2015 she introduced President Obama at the National Christmas Tree lighting. She published her memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom, in 2018. And on March 31, 2022, at the age of 100, the oldest ranger in America finally retired — having spent fifteen years as a ranger rewriting, one visitor at a time, who the home-front story belongs to.
She was 104 when she died this past December, having lived from the age of Jim Crow’s full strength to an age where her own park tells her own story. The women she filed papers for in a segregated union hall in 1943 are in the national record now, in a national park, because one of them lived long enough — and worked long enough — to put them there herself.
Join the conversation
Ranger at 85. Retired at 100. Gone at 104, with the story fixed. Did you ever meet a ranger — or a grandmother — whose unscripted talks taught you more than any textbook? Share Betty Reid Soskin’s name today; she spent a century earning the audience. Tell us below.
Source note: Betty Reid Soskin’s account — born September 22, 1921, in Detroit; her WWII work as a file clerk at a segregated Black boilermakers’ union hall in Richmond, California; her co-founding with her husband Mel Reid of Reid’s Records in Berkeley in 1945, one of California’s first Black-owned record stores (operating until 2019); her role in the early 2000s helping plan the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park and insisting it tell the stories of Black and brown home-front workers; her joining the National Park Service and becoming a ranger at 85 and the oldest active ranger in NPS history, known for unscripted talks drawing on her own life; her introducing President Obama at the National Christmas Tree lighting in 2015; her memoir Sign My Name to Freedom (2018); her retirement on March 31, 2022, at age 100; and her death on December 21, 2025, at 104 — is from the National WWII Museum obituary (December 2025), Smithsonian Magazine (2022 retirement), NPR via WCMU (April 2022), and Oakland Voices (January 2026 memorial).
