She survived the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, opened one particular of the Bay Area’s 1st Black-owned record stores in Oakland in 1945 and was named the California Girl of the Calendar year award in 1995.
President Barack Obama gave her a silver coin with the Presidential seal when he invited her to a national Xmas tree lights ceremony.
But on Saturday, it was the general public who celebrated Betty Reid Soskin, 100, the nation’s oldest active park ranger. She experienced served much more than 15 several years at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Household Front Countrywide Historical Park in Richmond right before retiring final month.

Organizers of the ceremony had been remaining scrambling to come across seats for hundreds of well wishers who collected at the Craneway Pavilion following doorway to the park’s Customer Education and learning Middle to honor the Bay Area’s beloved ranger.
Retired Nationwide Park Services deputy regional director Martha Lee shared reminiscences of hiring Reid Soskin, recalling how she was at first unwilling to use the ranger’s uniform.
That did not final lengthy.
Reid Soskin led tours at the park and museum honoring girls who worked in factories for the duration of wartime and shared her own practical experience as a Black woman during the conflict. She labored for the U.S. Air Power in 1942 but quit following discovering that “she was employed only due to the fact her superiors thought she was white,” according to a Park Company biography.

When she was accomplished speaking, Lee asked individuals who realized Reid Soskin, which includes her family members, to stand. Then she asked her NPS operate colleagues to stand, her good friends at the Rosie the Riveter have confidence in and eventually, everyone who had “been influenced in any way by Betty’s daily life experience and tales.”
No 1 remained seated.
Director of the Nationwide Park Support Chuck Sams presented Reid Soskin with one of the NPS’s legendary, arrow-head formed plaques, signed by dozens of her former colleagues. She acknowledged it graciously, holding it near to her upper body with both equally palms just before thanking every person for their help and for “putting the wind below my wings.”




